Directed acyclic graph-based patient education system for cardiovascular patients in Taiwan

Background: Cardiovascular disease is the leading global cause of death and the number of patients is expected to grow yearly. Pertinent patient education materials provide adequate medical information to cardiovascular patients to change their behaviors, improve their health status, and reduce medical costs. However, systematic and patient-oriented education materials for cardiovascular disease are currently not available to the public, especially in Chinese. Methods: A directed acyclic graph (DAG) database structure is proposed for storing all created low-demand medical illustrations and video clips. Further, all designed medical media elements are evaluated according to the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) to assure the quality of the medical information content. Each media element is automatically annotated by calculating representative keywords; relationships between different media elements are constructed according to keyword associations. Results: A total of 222 video clips and 45 printable medical documents in Chinese were created in the proposed patient education system. This contains fundamental knowledge of diseases, causes of diseases, medical and surgical treatments, and a prognosis of the medical care for the majority of types of cardiovascular disease. It is the first constructive and intelligent patient education system for cardiovascular patients in Taiwan.