GALEN-IN-USE

• Mr. Alan Rector
  

  University of Manchester
  Oxford Road UK-M13 9PL Manchester United Kingdom	tel: 44 16 12 75 61 33 fax: 44 16 12 75 69 32 galen@cs.man.ac.uk
  url:

GALEN-IN-USE is catalysing the development of Europe-wide telematic infrastructure to harmonise and maintain multilingual resources for clinical language, terminology and classification.

GALEN-IN-USE is cooperating with the European Federation of Classification Centres to demonstrate new techniques for harmonising national terminologies and classifications. Medical procedures is taken as the test case because of their economic importance and the demand from users internationally for a more flexible terminology. GALEN’s techniques allow great flexibility in tailoring the terminology to local and national needs because they are based on a ‘reference model’ – a grammar and lexicon of concepts which can be recombined and reorganised as required –rather than a fixed set of terms or ‘rubrics’.

GALEN-IN-USE will validate the resources developed through demonstrators covering clinical protocols and data entry systems for General Practice, Diabetic Care and Cardiology in cooperation with other projects in the Fourth Framework Programme and national initiatives.

GALEN-IN-USE is intrinsically multilingual. It will contribute to an open multilingual environment for clinical systems across Europe.

• GPs, Orthopaedic surgeons, and diabetologists in the established user groups of GALEN’s commercial collaborators, to be extended in collaboration with other Healthcare Telematic projects.
• Public authorities, standards bodies, health service managers, and staff translating and developing medical terminology and coding systems.

• Quick, intuitive, data entry based on GALEN’s ‘lexicon and grammar of concepts’ which hide codes from users and are easily tailored to local needs.
• Multilingual interfaces and records based on generating expressions in each natural language from the same underlying ‘lexicon and grammar of concepts’.
• Cooperative development and dissemination using telematic tools and the World Wide Web.
• ‘Terminology servers’ to convert between data in different formats and different coding systems.

• Better electronic healthcare records used enthusiastically by clinicians.
• Easier, more effective communication of patient-centred health care records and information.
• Easier, faster translation of systems into all European languages.
• More effective quality assurance based on integration of electronic healthcare records and protocols.
• Increased access to healthcare information by citizens in their own language.

• Quick intuitive data entry systems and user interfaces. Data entry systems based on traditional coding systems have failed to gain widespread acceptance, even with graphical user interfaces. GALEN’s techniques result from a decade’s user-centred design and are enthusiastically received by clinicians.
• Faster, more effective, and ultimately cheaper development, translation, and maintenance of terminologies and classification systems tasks which currently cost European healthcare systems millions of ECUs annually.

• Wider, more open markets based on:
• Independence of language and coding systems
• Easier integration of systems
• New markets for integrated decision support, advanced information, and healthcare records systems

• Harmonisation of national and international standards while respecting local requirements, languages, and customs.
• Development of Europe-wide cooperative institutions.
• Facilitation of Europe-wide markets.