INFORMATION SUMMARIZATION AND TRANSCODING OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATION RESOURCES FOR MOBILE HANDHELD DEVICES

Abstract

Small screen mobile devices such as PDAs and smart-phones have been popular among healthcare practitioners in the last few years, with a higher penetration rate compared to the general population. The availability of the device allows healthcare practitioners to access online biomedical resources anywhere at anytime. Previous studies have found that the integration of PDAs into clinical practice has lead to the decreased medication error rates and the improvement in physician's adherence to a clinical practice guideline. However, presenting a vast amount of information in the limited space of the PDA display has been the major barrier to the realization of PDA's potential. To overcome the small screen display limitation, we developed a multi-modal transcoder system. The transcoder system adapts information to the limitation of the user's device. Our current project focuses on transcoding full-text biomedical information resources to support mobile devices for healthcare professionals. We developed novel algorithms to understand the structure of biomedical resources through the use of visual template matching and pagelet detection process. The system utilizes simplification and summarization techniques to deliver compact information to the mobile user. A usability study conducted on the system revealed that the simplification and summarization techniques improve the usability of the system.