Towards a quantitative approach of medical information. Part 1. Measures of a multidimensional medical information space

Abstract

Despite the importance of quantitative analysis of medical information, it is a rare subject in informatics literature. To stimulate more interest the authors propose a multidimensional medical information space, in which measures can be defined to compare different medical information objects or knowledge areas. To describe the measures, classical information theory, the general database theory of Sundgren and the Blois model of medical thinking are used. A space model of (at least) three dimensions is offered, where information objects might have a normalized length, a total depth (measuring embedded knowledge levels) and a complexity width.