The networks from medical knowledge and clinical practice have small-world, scale-free, and hierarchical features

Yutaka Tachimori, Hiroaki Iwanaga and Takashi Tahara

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2013, vol. 392, issue 23, 6084-6089

Abstract: Here, we constructed and analyzed a network (henceforth, “medical knowledge network”) derived from a commonly used medical text. We show that this medical knowledge network has small-world, scale-free, and hierarchical features. We then constructed a network from data from a hospital information system that reflected actual clinical practice and found that this network also had small-world, scale-free, and hierarchical features. Moreover, we found that both the diagnosis frequency distribution of the hospital network and the diagnosis degree distribution of the medical knowledge network obeyed a similar power law. These findings suggest that the structure of clinical practice may emerge from the mutual influence of medical knowledge and clinical practice, and that the analysis of a medical knowledge network may facilitate the investigation of the characteristics of medical practice.

Keywords: Small-world; Scale-free; Complex network; Natural language; Medical knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:392:y:2013:i:23:p:6084-6089

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2013.07.047

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