Evaluation of KNAVE-II: a tool for intelligent query and exploration of patient data.

We present the results of a preliminary evaluation of KNA VE-II, a distributed knowledge-based computational framework for visualization, interpretation, and exploration of time-oriented clinical data and of multiple levels of concepts derived from the data. KNAVE-II uses a distributed temporal-mediation architecture to access at runtime a domain-specific knowledge base (KB) that contains properties of the clinical data and a knowledge-based temporal-abstraction problem-solving method to compute on the fly interpretations of these data. The purpose of the evaluation was to compare efficiency and user satisfaction when answering clinical queries of variable complexity about clinical time-oriented data using KNAVE-II, versus using an electronic spreadsheet (ESS) or Paper. Subjects answered high complexity queries significantly faster using KNAVE-II than Paper or ESS. User satisfaction with KNAVE-II was significantly superior compared with satisfaction using Paper or ESS based on a standard usability scale. Users also explicitly ranked KNAVE-II as superior to Paper and ESS.