The effective and efficient use of information systems in health care organizations and services are a vital element of the quality of life world wide. The modeling of time has attracted interest from a number of research communities, each addressing aspects from its specific sphere of interests. The database systems community is interested in how to store, maintain, and query time-oriented data. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) community is interested in formal theories of time, temporal logics, temporal constraints and temporal reasoning techniques. The Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) community is interested in the broader issues.
Temporal Information Systems in Medicine introduces the engineering of information systems for medically-related problems and applications. The chapters are organized into four parts; fundamentals, temporal reasoning & maintenance in medicine, time in clinical task, and the display of time-oriented clinical information. The chapters are self-contained with pointers to other relevant chapters or sections in this book when necessary. Time is of central importance and is a key component of the engineering process for information systems.
