| Title | Knowledge & Information Sharing in Medical Expert Teams |
| Period | October 2015 – March 2019 |
| Sponsored or supported by | KWF, Lakeside Labs GmbH, Karl Storz GmbH |
| Cooperation(s) | Klinikum Klagenfurt (KABEG) |
| Project leader | Assoc.-Prof. DI Dr. Klaus Schöffmann |
| klaus.schöffmann@aau.at | |
| Web | https://visurge.wp.itec.aau.at/ |
| Employee | DI Dr. Manfred Jürgen Primus, Mag. DI Dr. Bernd Münzer, DI Andreas Leibetseder, DIin Sabrina Kletz, Dr.in Pille Pargmae, Prof. Dr. Jörg Keckstein, Peter Spiess-Knafl, Roman Buchbauer |
| Description | In the field of endoscopic surgery, modern information technology brought revolutionary improvements in the last decade. Physicians are enabled to perform minimally invasive surgeries with the help of high resolution cameras, to follow the progress of the surgery on large, high definition (HD) video screens and to record and store the videos of the interventions. These techniques are on the highest level of state‐ofthe‐art technology. On the other hand, the further destiny of the recorded endoscopic videos falls into a technological gap. Tools for further exploration, such as search, interaction and sharing are poor or nonexisting at all. The main goal of the KISMET project is to fill this gap, at least to a certain extent, with novel and competitive tools.
We concentrate on a specific area, on endoscopy in gynecology, in particular in endometriosis, relying on the world‐wide admitted practices of the LKH Villach in this area. We apply basic and applied research methods to investigate the current situation in the hospital LKH Villach, identify problems in the workflows related to multimedia content, develop possible improvements and evaluate them in day‐today usage scenarios. The three main research questions of the project are (i) how to gain expert knowledge from physicians in a convenient way, without imposing additional workload on them, (ii) how to adapt state‐of‐the‐art multimedia content indexing methods to the specific characteristics of medical multimedia data based on expert knowledge and (iii) how to support sharing of data and metadata among the experts (enabling an enhanced communication with patients as well). The research objectives in the project are divided into three major parts. In the medical part we focus on evaluating the practical applicability of the methods and concepts developed in the other two parts in the context of day‐to‐day workflows of a medical expert team. In the content part we are going to develop (semi‐) automatic content analysis and content indexing algorithms, which are capable of dealing with the special characteristics of medical multimedia data and which are able to adapt to expert knowledge. In the interaction part we will implement innovative interactions means for content browsing and information sharing within medical expert teams. In the long‐term perspective, the KISMET project should be a contribution to further improve the reputation of healthcare in Carinthia. The connection between a non‐academic hospital (LKH) and academic research at the university could serve as a model in raising the level both of healthcare and research. This cooperation may be the starting point for a new key area in the field of computer science and healthcare, which may emerges at the university. From an economic point of view, the ideas developed and evaluated in the context of this project may be the basis for a start‐up company, which transfers the filling of the above mentioned technological gap into filling a market niche with innovative products for managing of very large amount of medical multimedia content. |