Vocabulary hierarchy exploration via Atlas

Friends:

This is a key problem we need to solve: The ability to effectively navigate this space. I agree with @anthonysena that listing >400 concepts through >40 pages is not useful. This design element is just not working in such cases. And I like @Sigfried_Gold’s direction of a topological graphical display.

The problem is that our design has to deal with several problems:

  • Medically meaningful relationships (like ‘Anatomical site of’) vs navigational/hierarchical relationships (‘Is a’, ‘Equivalent of’)
  • One related concept/parent/child vs a few relateds/parents/children vs many many relateds/parents/children
  • Non-standard vs. standard concepts, where we want to discourage the use of non-standard ones (they are not compatible with the CDMs that are ETLed from other coding schemes, we really need to wean people off those ICD9s).

I can think of a number of ways to tackle this:

  1. If we want a single standard navigator of things, it proboably needs to have two views simultaneously:
  • An overview topological view where we are (like a dot on the US map), and
  • A local view (the streets around my house in Cambridge).
  1. We need to have “flexible” design elements depending on the size of the topological neighborhood:
  • If the result set is up to a small amount (say, 5) elements, like 1 ATC, 1 VA Class, 4 Indications, 5 ETC, just list them.
  • If the result set is more than 5 put in a place holder, like “457 SPL”, “8 NDFRT”. Upon being clicked, this placeholder should provide the ability to drill down by offering a search box or filters.
  1. We may provide a “smart” context-sensitive navigation dependent on what we are showing. So, in case of a Metformin we know it is a drug ingredient, and for those the screen might offer several specific searches:
  • “Show me drug classes for this ingredient”,
  • “Show me indications for this ingredient”,
  • “Show me source codes for this ingredient”,
  • “Show me drug forms used with this ingredients”,
  • “Show me dosages used with this ingredient”.
  1. is probably where we need to go eventually, since nobody will really truly manage to navigate 1) and 2), with the exception of a few hard-core orienteering experts. But it is a lot more work.

Looks like we need a design session with a large white board for this.