LifeFlow is a tool designed to analyze temporal event sequences by visualization. It is recommended that the users read the paper first to become familiar about the design of LifeFlow. The paper can be found at: http://www.cs.umd.edu/localphp/hcil/tech-reports-search.php?number=2010-22

System requirements

LifeFlow can be used on systems running either Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows. The minimum system requirements are:

Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.6.0 or newer. Please see Appendix A for how to verify the JRE version on your system.
Screen resolution at least 1024x768
(recommended) More than 2GB of memory

LifeFlow has been tested on Mac OS X 10.5-10.7, Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 7.

How to download and install LifeFlow?

LifeFlow is now available. Please email Catherine Plaisant at ude.dmu.sc@tnasialp for the executable and source code.

After extracting the zip file, run LifeFlow by:

on Windows: double-clicking the file lifeflow_win.bat in the extracted directory.
on Mac: double-clicking the file lifeflow_mac.command in the extracted directory.

Data format

Four different files are used in LifeFlow.

Event data file (.txt) contains the event type, the timestamp, and the event attribute
(Optional) Attribute data file (.attrib) contains the record attribute
(Optional) Config file (.xml) keeps the preferred settings of visualization
(Optional) Log file (.log) keeps the modification log to the data

Event Data file

It is a 4-column tab-delimited text file.

1st column is record ID.
2nd column is event type.
3rd column is date and time.
4th column contains event attributes in the format:
attribute-name1="attribute-value1" ; attribute-name2="attribute-value2" ; ...
Use ; to separate between attributes. Leave this column blank if you do not have any event attribute.

Attribute Data file (optional)

Table 1.4.1: Sample event data file (sample_data.txt)
Record ID	Event type	Date and Time	Event attributes
4318	Arrival	2010-01-19 03:53:00	Account No.="24287939"; Entrance-Diagnosis="Heart attack"; Exit-Diagnosis="Heart attack"
4318	ER	2010-01-19 03:53:00
4318	ICU	2010-01-19 03:53:00	Room No.="125"
4318	Floor	2010-01-19 03:53:00	Room No.="854"
4318	Exit-DISC	2010-01-19 06:44:00	ED-Dispo="DISC"; Exit-Diagnosis="Heartburn"
5397	Arrival	2010-01-19 03:53:00	Account No.="24287939"; Entrance-Diagnosis="Heart attack"; Exit-Diagnosis="Heart attack"
5397	ER	2010-01-19 03:53:00
5397	Floor	2010-01-19 03:53:00	Room No.="854"
5397	Exit-DISC	2010-01-19 06:44:00	ED-Dispo="DISC"; Exit-Diagnosis="Heartburn"

This file store the non-temporal attributes of each record. You are not required have to have this file if you do not have any record attribute. It is a 3-column tab-delimited text file, which has the same name as the event data file but with extension *.attrib.

1st column is record ID.
2nd column is attribute name.
3rd column is attribute value.

Config File (optional)

Table 1.4.2: Sample attribute data file (sample_data.attrib)
Record ID	Attribute name	Attribute value
4318	Gender	Male
5397	Gender	Female

The config file helps the users to bring back their previously used setting and continue the analysis (Section 4.1). For example, their preferred color of the event. Another important aspect is to carefully maintain a log file about where the data came from, what modifications were made, etc. To help convert data to the LifeFlow format we are developing the DataKitchen application.

Sample data to use while learning LifeFlow

Throughout the manual, a sample dataset is used to demonstrate the features in LifeFlow. Please email ude.dmu.sc@wtsirk for the sample file.

The sample data is a generated set of electronic medical records with six event types:

Arrival
Emergency
ICU
Floor
Die
Discharge-Alive