Combining visual block programming and graph manipulation for clinical alert rule building.

In this paper, we present MARBLS (Medical Alert Rule BuiLding System) - a visual end-user programming environment to facilitate the design and testing of clinical alert rules. MARBLS enables a two-way, synchronized visual rule workspace and visual query explorer. Clinical rules can be built by docking relevant block components in the rule workspace, by directly manipulating graphs in the visual query explorer, or a combination of both. In a pilot study with five healthcare experts, we found MARBLS is easy to learn and users can build rules efficiently and discover errors in existing rules quickly with the visual environment provided by MARBLS.