Medical Computing > FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions about Computing for Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

  1. General
  2. Medical Devices
  3. Medical Software
  4. Bioinfomatics
  5. Usability
  6. Software Development

General


  2. What are some good online sources of information for patients?
    See Medical Computing for Patients.
  3. What are some good online sources of information for medical professionals?
    See Resources on Information Technology and Computing for Medical Professionals.
  4. What is RSS?
    RSS (RDF Site Summary, Real Simple Syndication, and some other acronyms [RDF = Resource Description Framework]) is a summary of web resources. It is an efficient way to scan and browse news, articles, and other online information sources. Usually, RSS is fed to an RSS browser or other web site to keep it up to date. RSS feeds are also called 'channels' in Microsoft language. See blogspace.com/rss/resources for more information. Atom is a related format for browsing web resources.
  5. How can I look at RSS?
    Some web sites such as my.yahoo.com aggregate RSS feeds from your favorite source. You can also freely download the RSSOwl browser at and many other RSS browsers.
  6. How can I put my own RSS feed on the Internet?
    First create an XML file in RSS format.  The easiest way to do that is probably to look at the format of another feed and copy the tag structure.  After putting the XML file on your site register it as with Syndic8 or another RSS hub.
  7. Are there any other good FAQ lists relating to medicine and computing out there?
    Medical Informatics FAQ at www.faqs.org/faqs/medical-informatics-faq has not been updated in a long time.  Misc.health.diabetes software at www.faqs.org/faqs/diabetes/software/index.html is active but specialized in diabetes software.

Medical Devices

  1. What government body regulates medical devices in the United States?
    US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). See their web site at www.fda.gov/cdrh/index.html
  2. Is medical software a medical device?
    Yes. According to the US Food and Drug Administration's definition anything storing patient's medical or personal information is a medical device. This includes PC and web based software, in addition to what most people would regard as a device (a gadget).

Medical Software

  1. Are there any regulations about security and privacy for patient data?
    Privacy and security of medical data is regulated by the US Department of Health and Human Services via enforcement of HIPAA (Heatlth Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) - a US law covering protection of the privacy of personal health information.

Bioinfomatics

  1. What is RDF?
    Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a XML variant for describing about resources, often web resources.  If is the basis for some variants of RSS, the Gene Ontology Project, the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings system, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) SNOMED® (the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine) language, the Biological Pathways Exchange (BioPAX) project, and Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) vocabularies.  See the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) RDF Primer for more details.

Usability

  1. What is usability and why is it important?
    Usability refers to how easy or difficult some object or device is to use. This is a big problem for computer software because of complexity and neglect of the issue. Check out the book Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman for a general discussion on usability and its importance. In the medical world usability is critically important to avoid mistakes being made that could affect a patient's health.
  2. What is some good online sources of information on usability?
    Check out useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website or www.humanfactors.com.

Software Development

  1. What is open source software?
    Open source software is software where the source code is freely available. This implies that the software is free. However, free software is not necessarily open source. See the article Open Source Software and Documentation for Chemistry and Biomedical Sciences for a discussion of open source software in medicine and biomedical sciences or go right to the source (excuse the pun) at the Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org).
  2. What is PHP?
    PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor or Personal Home Page) is a freely available open source scripting language that is commonly embedded into HTML for web development and to serve dynamic content.  This is a great way to create dynamic content on a low cost Linux web site.  See www.php.net for lots of links and the PHP Manual to get started with PHP.
  3. Wat are some basic references on HTML and JavaScript?
    The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) HTML page at HyperText Markup Language (HTML) Home Page is the authorative reference.  The Microsoft site for Web Development is the authorative site for Microsoft Internet Explorer.  Still relevant and easy to use is the Netscape JavaScript Guide, now hosted by the Mozilla Project.
  4. What is dynamic HTML?
    Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) involves the use of JavaScript (or some other scripting language) to change a web page while a user is interacting with it.  This is usually done by manipulating the HTML document object model (DOM).  See the W3C's DOM site at www.w3.org/DOM/ for details.
  5. What is AJAX?
    AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) is a collection of web client technologies, including HTML and XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, use of HTML Document Object Model (DOM), and creation of rich interaction with XML and XmlHttpRequest.  See the article Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications for a discussion of the overall approach and advantages and the article Scripting For The 6.0 Browsers for the JavaScript approach.

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© 2006 Alex Amies