THE MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM FOR MANAGING

INFORMATION

A Framework and Approach to Supporting the Play and Replay of

Information in Computerised Information Systems

Bing Wu, Kudakwashe Dube

School of Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology, kevin Street, Dublin, D 8, Ireland

Essam Mansour

School of Computing, Dublin Institute of Technology, kevin Street, Dublin, D 8, Ireland

Keywords: Motion picture paradigm, information scene, information management, information visualisation.

Abstract: The ability of Information Systems to provide a continuous, on-the-fly and playable information scene for

any specified review period of arbitrary time granularity would help to enhance the reporting and decision-

support capabilities of CIS. This paper presents a new paradigm, called the motion picture paradigm, for

information management. The paradigm views an organisation’s database and information system as a

mechanism for recording motion pictures of organisational information scenes that can be queried and

presented through on-the-fly, dynamic and interactive play and re-play operations.

1 INTRODUCTION

A key goal for computerised information systems is

to facilitate an easy production of reports that

present decision-support information to

organisational management. Typically, such reports

are periodic reports that give only a snapshot of the

status of an organisation at a particular date.

Combining information visualisation and databases

would present huge benefits in terms of information

organisation, presentation and interpretation (Owor

2002). While live interaction (Wesson and Warren

2001) and visualisation (Shen and Eades 2005) of

data have been investigated, the ability to provide a

permanent live interactive record of information that

can be queried, played and replayed has not been

investigated thoroughly up to now.

This paper presents a new paradigm, called the

motion picture paradigm, which views an

organisation’s database and information system as

mechanisms for recording dynamic and interactive

motion pictures of organisational information. The

dynamic and interactive playing and replying of

information scenes is a key aspect of this paradigm

and perspective to information and knowledge

management. In this paper, information scene is

defined as a multi-dimensional information space

whose composite elements and dimensions interact

dynamically to make up a meaningful domain

information scenario that can be formally specified.

Experience from our earlier work (Wu, Mansour

et al. 2007; Dube 2004; Wu and Dube 2001) reveals

that presentation, analysis and review of information

can be significantly simplified and enhanced through

a new paradigm that combines information

visualisation with allowing information to be

managed, played and replayed in a dynamic and

interactive manner on the basis of a formally

constructed and meaningful domain information

scene.

2 RELATED WORK

The concept of playing information has been

investigated in a number of application domains.

Consequently, a number of approaches and methods

of supporting information play and replay has

emerged (Manohar and Prakash 1994; Ronsse and

Bosschere 1999; Brown and Patterson 2002; Kwon

515

Wu B., Dube K. and Mansour E. (2008).

THE MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM FOR MANAGING INFORMATION - A Framework and Approach to Supporting the Play and Replay of Information

in Computerised Information Systems.

In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - DISI, pages 515-518

DOI: 10.5220/0001715305150518

 SciTePress

and Song 1999; Greenhalgh, Pubrick et al. 2000;

Ouyang, Li et al. 2003; Crowley 1996; Steven,

Chandra et al. 2000). However, it can be noted that

the concept of replay has not yet been fully

investigated in the context of data and information

management.

The need and benefits of a new framework and

paradigm that incorporates

playing and replaying of

information is best appreciated through Hans

Rosling’s GapMinder presentation software for

interactive animated multi-dimensional visualization

of development statistics (Rosling, Rosling

Rönnlund et al. 2005).

Our work investigates the support for replaying

information scenes from real-time systems based on

query-response approach that allows playable scenes

of information to be composed on-the-fly based on

the query specifications.

3 THE MOTION PICTURE

PARADIGM

The key question that we pose here is: Is it possible

to support the capture of data during day-to-day

organisational operations while at the same time

dynamically constructing and presenting the

complete information “picture” or “scene” such

that the effects of the data or information changes

would form a natural aspect of “motion” within the

complete information “picture” or “scene”?

The motion picture paradigm, therefore, aims at

capturing, generating, mining and discovering all

information or knowledge elements that would

constitute a complete “information scene” including

dynamic interconnections between these elements

and these “scenes”.

A key aspect of the paradigm is the concept of

an information scene and its manipulation,

especially its visual presentation to human senses.

Thus, the question arises of the ability to specify a

request or query for the information scene, compose

it on-the-fly and then play and replay it.

4 FRAMEWORK FOR

SUPPORTING THE MOTION

PICTURE PARADIGM

Figure 1 presents authors’ framework that would

allow the Motion Picture Paradigm to be supported

within information systems. The key dimensions,

which are also components that make up the

framework for managing complex information are:

environment, time, information, process and

knowledge. Within a given environment and time

frame, the body of organisational information moves

from one state to another under dynamic impacts of

organisational processes within the contextual

framework of the existing knowledge within the

organisation. Under such a framework, best practice

can be formalised based on experience and

knowledge and then applied to processes and

information, which in turn would enrich it. Processes

and information interact and mutually impact on

each other as they move along possibly multiple

dimensions, e.g., time and other domain-specific

dimensions. Motion in information scenarios could

then be realised and explored along any of these

dimensions. Thus, dynamic “information scenes”

may be composed and manipulated, creating a

foundation for the motion picture paradigm for

managing the information.

Figure 1: Framework for the multi-dimensional

management of information.

5 APPROACH TO REALISING

THE MOTION PICTURE

PARADIGM WITHIN THE

FRAMEWORK

Figure 2 illustrates a scheme for supporting the

information scene. In this scheme, the information

scene (S) is supported by the three dimensions of the

framework, namely, information (I), processes (P)

and knowledge (K), as well as an extra dimension

called meta-information (M). Meta- information (M)

consists of information about the other dimensions

K, I and P as well as the information scene (S).

Suppose we want to play the information scene S:

“What transpired, from a drug versus vital signals

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516

perspective, before a patient started experiencing a

severe complication”. We would require

information on P: “The treatment regime’s execution

process up to the point of interest”, I: “The

electronic patient record”, K: “The best practice

Figure 2: Supporting the “information scene” through four

dimensions.

knowledge used”, and M: “Schemes, definitions and

specifications associated with S, K, I, M and P”. A

comprehensive information scene S could be

composed using data analysis, mining and discovery

techniques and formally specified based on some

meta-information (M) schema. Thus, the resulting

specification is a copy of an information scene that

can be manipulated, shared and played back using

information visualisation technologies.

Figure 3: Conceptual scheme for supporting playing

information within the motion picture paradigm.

Figure 3 illustrates the conceptual scheme for

generically supporting replay for a target

information system. A play request is presented as a

play query that specifies what aspects of the

information are required to be played. Parameters

and conditions may be used to characterise aspects

or dimensions of the information to be played. Such

a query could be specified by the use of what may be

termed as an information play query language. An

analysis of the play query together with mining and

discovery processes leads to a detailed specification

of the playable information scene, which is

expressed in a play specification language. Such a

specification would be submitted to an information

player and used to create the play process and

visualisations, which is effectively the execution of

the replay specification. The replay process would

then present, as a response to the user’s query, the

information play visualisation.

6 APPLICATIONS OF THE

MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM

Application domain of our work so far has mainly

been focused on supporting the management of

complex information in computerised clinical

practice guideline systems. The Motion Picture

Paradigm was initially applied to the TOPS system (

Wu and Dube 2001; Dube 2004) on top of an active

database system and, further developed recently to

the AIMS system implemented with XML and, an

active database system enhanced with temporal

features (Wu, Mansour et al. 2007).

A clinical practice guideline (CPG) is a

systematic set of statements that result from the

formalisation of evidence-based knowledge for

guiding clinicians and patients on how best to

manage patients’ conditions. In our work, formal

specification languages are developed for CPGs

using the active rule paradigm as a core primitive.

The guideline execution engine is an active

electronic healthcare record system based on an

active database. CPG specifications are stored and

maintained over time to accommodate changes and

improvements in best practice knowledge for the

relevant disease category. From the user’s

standpoint, a submission of information replaying

query leads to the dynamic visualisation of the

information visualisation. Thus, the information

replay query is submitted to a replay command

processor, which incorporates data analysis,

information mining and discovery modules to aid the

composition of the playable information scene. The

information replay execution engine uses the

information scene specification to instantiate the

required play process, which is presented to the user

through a play visualisation module. Our

preliminary experience of this approach has proved

promising and pointed to a need for a more vigorous

THE MOTION PICTURE PARADIGM FOR MANAGING INFORMATION - A Framework and Approach to Supporting

the Play and Replay of Information in Computerised Information Systems

517

investigation towards fully realising a

comprehensive implementation of the framework

and applications of this paradigm in other domains.

7 BENEFITS AND FUTURE

WORK

The ability for computerised information systems to

provide a continuous, on-the-fly, dynamic, playable

and visual “information scenes” for any specified

period of arbitrary time granularity would:

1) help organisational management to apprehend

fully the state of affairs in their organisation;

2) allow trends in information to be easily

understood;

3) facilitate important questions to be posed and

answered;

4) facilitate the creation of reports at any time

during business operations.

This work is of particular benefit to the domain of

healthcare where the task of point-of-care review of

a patient’s medical record is made faster and easier

than otherwise if the information were playable from

multiple dimensions

The work presented here is part of on-going

work. The core concepts and methods of the new

paradigm and framework are under further

investigations aimed at giving them a more firm and

formal grounding. A more comprehensive

implementation of the proof-of-concepts prototype

system is in progress focusing on the domain of

clinical practice protocols. This will lead to

evaluation of the core concepts, methods and

approach with assistance from domain experts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors acknowledge the funding support from

the Arnold Graves Fellowship Trustees and the

Office of Postgraduate Studies and Research at the

Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.

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