Rethinking of medical information retrieval and access

Personalized information retrieval and access is critical to applications in the medical and healthcare domain where the accuracy of the retrieved information and obtaining it in a time critical situation are extremely important. Existing personalized information retrieval and access approaches in the medical and healthcare domain have improved in the last decade, but the centralized system design principle is impeding their ability to be flexible and adaptive to changing demands. These demands arise from the environment in which the approaches are used and from changing user requirements. In this paper we present our preliminary ideas regarding a new component-based design philosophy for personalized information retrieval and access services. We believe this paper offers a new way of thinking about the retrieval of time critical, personalized information from medical information systems.