Modelling of causal relations in human pathophysiology for medical education and design inspiration

Singh, S and Makharia, A and Chakrabarti, A (2019) Modelling of causal relations in human pathophysiology for medical education and design inspiration. In: 7th International Conference on Research into Design, ICoRD 2019, 9 - 11 January 2019, Bangalore, pp. 235-246.

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Abstract

While knowledge of general biological phenomena attracted much attention for supporting bio-inspired design, knowledge of biomedical problems has hardly been explored. However, this too can support training, diagnosis, and design. For instance, clinical expertise development during pre-clinical training depends on biomedical knowledge organized as complex causal structures in the clinician’s mind. The accuracy of diagnostic expertise depends on the richness of these causal structures. Knowledge of medical problems can also act as stimuli for ideation for a designer. However, there is a lack of a standard structure for the depiction of causal relations. The proposed model for causal relations in human pathophysiology aims at describing the causes and consequences of diseases to aid pre-clinical medical education and design inspiration. The model is based on a ‘systems thinking’ approach to studying a complex system, where the entities of a biological system, arranged hierarchically in multiple levels, interact to fulfil a function. The model incorporates three levels of description of a disease: Hierarchical component-issue level, issue inter-relation level and issue description level. The first level incorporates knowledge of the hierarchy of all related components and issues occurring in a disease. The second level captures relational knowledge among the issues. The third level provides data at the most detailed level of human biology (biochemical processes) for each issue in a disease. Each level is accompanied with textual descriptions and images to aid comprehension. A qualitative survey is conducted with medical students and faculty members to assess the usability of the model.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publication:	Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH.
Keywords:	Biological systems; Diagnosis; Education computing; Hierarchical systems; Medical education; Medical problems, Bio-inspired designs; Biochemical process; Biological phenomena; Biomedical problems; Expertise development; Hierarchical components; Qualitative surveys; Textual description, Structural design
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2022 05:52
Last Modified:	23 Nov 2022 05:52
URI:	https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/78010

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