method and apparatus for creating a report

A method of generating an expanded report on a computer, the method comprising the steps of:

• receiving from a user a selection of a starting template from one or more report templates and one or more previous structured reports, the report templates having one or more nodes representing alternative findings and the previous structured report having one or more nodes previously selected by the user;
• receiving from the user one or more selected nodes of the starting template;
• generating a structured report from the selected nodes, the structured report identifying the nodes selected by the user;
• and
• generating the expanded report from the selected nodes.

A computer program product for providing generating an expanded report on a computer, the computer program product having a medium with a computer program embodied thereon, the computer program comprising:

• computer program code for displaying a report template having one or more nodes to a user, each node having one or more properties that define behavior and appearance of each node in the report template;
• computer program code for receiving from the user one or more selected nodes of the report template;
• and
• computer program code for generating the expanded report from the selected nodes by converting each of the selected nodes into one or more phrases.

A method of creating a structured report, comprising:

• at a server computer,
• (a) converting a decision tree into an XML document by performing a pre-order tree traversal, wherein the XML document contains one or more nodes;
• (b) storing the XML document in a storage device connected to the server computer;
• at the client computer,
• (c) receiving the XML document from the server computer;
• (d) displaying the XML document to a user;
• (e) receiving information about the nodes from the user, wherein the information includes at least one selected node;
• (f) dynamically creating the structured report by converting the selected node into a meaningful sentence that consists of one or more sentence fragments at the server computer,
• (g) receiving the structured report from the client computer;
• (h) storing the structured report in the database that is connected to the server computer;
• and
• (i) distributing the structured report electronically.