{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,28]],"date-time":"2026-06-28T05:02:01Z","timestamp":1782622921378,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":24,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,26]],"date-time":"2016-02-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1456444800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Informatics"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Automated formalization of legal text is a time- and effort-consuming task, but human-based validation consumes even more of both. The exchange of healthcare data in compliance with the medical privacy law requires experts with deep familiarity of its intricate provisions for verification. The article presents a medical relational model (MRM) for the extraction of logical rules from medical law, required to design a medical decision support system (MDSS) that facilitates the process of exchanging data electronically with minimum human intervention. The division of medical law into small concept classes makes it easier to formalize the legal text of medical law into logical rules. These logical rules are then used to make a precise decision in compliance with the law, after evaluating requests from different entities for different purposes in MDSS. Our methodology is to analyze the legal text and release records in compliance with the medical law. For developing countries where medical laws are not as mature as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the USA, the proposed methodology can be adapted to build their MDSS based on MRM.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/informatics3010002","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,26]],"date-time":"2016-02-26T10:23:39Z","timestamp":1456482219000},"page":"2","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":8,"title":["Conversion of Legal Text to a Logical Rules Set from Medical Law Using the Medical Relational Model and the World Rule Model for a Medical Decision Support System"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"3","author":[{"given":"Imran","family":"Khan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science &amp; Software Engineering, International Islamic University, H-10 Campus, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Muhammad","family":"Sher","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science &amp; Software Engineering, International Islamic University, H-10 Campus, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Javed","family":"Khan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Syed","family":"Saqlain","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science &amp; Software Engineering, International Islamic University, H-10 Campus, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7474-0405","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anwar","family":"Ghani","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science &amp; Software Engineering, International Islamic University, H-10 Campus, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Husnain","family":"Naqvi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science &amp; Software Engineering, International Islamic University, H-10 Campus, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Muhammad","family":"Ashraf","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science &amp; Software Engineering, International Islamic University, H-10 Campus, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"342","article-title":"An action framework for compliance and governance","volume":"19","year":"2014","journal-title":"Clin. Gov. Int. J."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2007.70746","article-title":"Analyzing regulatory rules for privacy and security requirements","volume":"34","author":"Breaux","year":"2008","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Breaux, T.D. (2009). Legal Requirements Acquisition for the Specification of Legally Compliant Information Systems. [Ph.D. Thesis, North Carolina State University]."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"99","DOI":"10.1007\/s00766-012-0152-5","article-title":"A legal cross-references taxonomy for reasoning about compliance requirements","volume":"17","author":"Maxwell","year":"2012","journal-title":"Requir. Eng."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Otto, P.N., and Ant\u00f3n, A.I. (2007, January 15\u201319). Addressing legal requirements in requirements engineering. Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering, RE \u201907, Delhi, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/RE.2007.65"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"119","DOI":"10.1007\/s00766-009-0089-5","article-title":"Evaluating existing security and privacy requirements for legal compliance","volume":"15","author":"Massey","year":"2010","journal-title":"Requir. Eng."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maxwell, J.C., and Ant\u00f3n, A.I. (2010, January 11\u201312). The production rule framework: Developing a canonical set of software requirements for compliance with law. Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Health Informatics Symposium, Arlington, VA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1882992.1883092"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Alshugran, T., Dichter, J., and Rusu, A. (2015, January 1). Extending XACML to express and enforce laws and regulations privacy policies. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Long Island Systems, Applications and Technology Conference (LISAT), Farmingdale, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/LISAT.2015.7160190"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"663","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1748-720X.2003.tb00133.x","article-title":"Health information privacy and public health","volume":"31","author":"Hodge","year":"2003","journal-title":"J. Law Med. Ethics"},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Medical Privacy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2000). National Standards to Protect the Privacy of Personal Health Information, Available online: http:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/ocr\/hipaa\/finalreg.html."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"HIPAA Administrative (2009). 45 CFR, Parts 160, 162 and 164, Available online: http:\/\/www.hhs.gov."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Breaux, T.D., Vail, M.W., and Anton, A.I. (2006, January 11\u201315). Towards regulatory compliance: Extracting rights and obligations to align requirements with regulations. Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference Requirements Engineering, Minneapolis\/St. Paul, MN, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/RE.2006.68"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"313","DOI":"10.7326\/0003-4819-145-4-200608150-00019","article-title":"Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Privacy rule causes ongoing concerns among clinicians and researchers","volume":"145","author":"Wilson","year":"2006","journal-title":"Ann. Intern. Med."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sherman, D.M. (1987, January 1). A Prolog model of the income tax act of Canada. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, New York, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/41735.41750"},{"key":"ref_15","first-page":"687","article-title":"Prolog and the Law: Using Expert Systems to Perform Legal Analysis in the UK","volume":"3","author":"Borrelli","year":"1989","journal-title":"Softw. Law J."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lam, P.E., Mitchell, J.C., and Sundaram, S. (2009). A Formalization of HIPAA for a Medical Messaging System, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-03748-1_8"},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"Maxwell, J.C., and Anton, A.I. (September, January 31). Developing production rule models to aid in acquiring requirements from legal texts. Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE \u201909, Atlanta, GA, USA."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Maxwell, J.C., and Anton, A.I. (2010). A Refined Production Rule Model for Aiding in Regulatory Compliance, North Carolina State University."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"DeYoung, H., Garg, D., Jia, L., Kaynar, D., and Datta, A. (2010, January 4\u20138). Experiences in the logical specification of the HIPAA and GLBA privacy laws. Proceedings of the 9th Annual ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, Chicago, IL, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1866919.1866930"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Garg, D., DeYoung, H., Kaynar, D., and Datta, A. (2010). Logical Specification of the GLBA and HIPAA Privacy Laws, Carnegie-Mellon University.","DOI":"10.21236\/ADA571991"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"683","DOI":"10.1136\/amiajnl-2011-000111","article-title":"Design and development of an international clinical data exchange system: The international layer function of the Dolphin Project","volume":"18","author":"Li","year":"2011","journal-title":"J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2213","DOI":"10.1007\/s10916-011-9688-z","article-title":"Development of fundamental infrastructure for nationwide EHR in Japan","volume":"36","author":"Takemura","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Med. Syst."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3713","DOI":"10.1007\/s10916-012-9844-0","article-title":"Process-oriented integration and coordination of healthcare services across organizational boundaries","volume":"36","author":"Chiotti","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Med. Syst."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Khan, I., Alwarsh, M., and Khan, J.I. (2013, January 4\u20137). A comprehension approach for formalizing privacy rules of HIPAA for decision support. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), Miami, FL, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICMLA.2013.154"}],"container-title":["Informatics"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2227-9709\/3\/1\/2\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T19:19:44Z","timestamp":1760210384000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2227-9709\/3\/1\/2"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,26]]},"references-count":24,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,3]]}},"alternative-id":["informatics3010002"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/informatics3010002","relation":{},"ISSN":["2227-9709"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2227-9709","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,26]]}}}