Temporal trend analysis in personal health records

The creation of a universal standard for electronic medical records (EMR) remains a work in progress. The existence of a standard EMR that can be accessed by medical professionals anywhere in the world as well as by the patient will have a significant impact on the way that medicine is practiced. In addition to having information readily available, it would present the possibility to do individual trend analysis on each patient based on information accumulated over a lifetime. This information would permit diagnosis based on the individual rather than solely on population statistics. A comprehensive system for performing trend analysis on the multitude of data types relevant to medical decision making requires the creation and integration of a number of methods. A general approach based on a hybrid combination of automated decision support methods is described and illustrated for using trend data applied to cardiac diagnosis. The methods are general and can be applied to any application area.