Patent ID: 7593967

Claim:
In a computer system including a computer having a processor and memory, a method of creating a clinical reference material on a desired topic, the method comprising: receiving a hierarchy of medical data from an author using an electronic authoring tool comprising a user interface including: a) a master outline authoring tool, which is used by the author to create the hierarchy of medical data, b) a diagnostic authoring tool, which is used by the author to create the diagnosis information; and c) a case authoring tool, which is used by the author to enter and edit the plurality of images and text, wherein the hierarchy of medical data includes: a plurality of diagnoses; a plurality of anatomical regions; a plurality of pathologies; and relational data describing relationships between the diagnoses, anatomical regions, and pathologies, each diagnosis defining at least one medical condition that is associated with at least one anatomical region and pathology; storing the hierarchy of medical data in a relational database in the memory of the computer, wherein the hierarchy of medical data is organized according to the relational data; receiving diagnosis information from the author for each of the plurality of diagnoses, wherein the diagnosis information describes general characteristics of each of the plurality of diagnoses; storing the diagnosis information of each of the plurality of diagnoses in the relational database with the corresponding diagnosis in the plurality of diagnoses; receiving a plurality of images and text relating to a particular case from the author, the images and text being associated with a particular diagnosis stored in the relational database; storing the plurality of images and text relating to the particular case in the relational database such that the images and text are associated with the particular diagnosis; receiving a first request from a user for medical reference data on a desired topic; retrieving the requested medical reference data from the relational database, wherein the medical reference data include at least some of the plurality of images and text, diagnosis information, and medical data related to the first request from the relational database stored in the memory of the computer; presenting the requested medical reference data to the user in a navigable user interface wherein the navigable user interface is presented on a display of a user computer according to the hierarchy of medical data; receiving a second request for clinical reference material from the user via the navigable user interface, wherein the clinical reference material includes a selected subset of the medical reference data in a requested format; reformatting the selected subset of the medical reference data received by the author into the requested format requested by the user to form the requested clinical reference material; and sending the requested clinical reference material to the user in the requested format.