Abstract:
In a hospital environment, where large numbers of reports are compiled, data compression
offers a method for substantially reducing the required disk space whilst protecting
the confidentiality of patient data. An analysis is given of the most important parameters
that influence compression of free-text data, to realize an efficient implementation
of an archiving system for medical reports. An overall reduction of the required disk
space by more than 50% can be attained, as well as supplementary level of protection.
A slight increase in access time is thereby inevitable, but almost insignificant.
Such an archiving system constitutes a necessary component for an intelligent information
retrieval system. The access to information contained in medical documents (by means
of natural language processing and artificial intelligence techniques) is considered
to be one of the key issues in the field of medical informatics for the coming decades.
Keywords
Medical Archiving - Data Compression - Data Encryption - Intelligent Information Retrieval
