Infomed

The Center for Biomedical Informatics
State University of Campinas, Brazil


Research Abstracts


AN USER-PROGRAMMABLE TOOL FOR MEDICAL DECISION MAKING WITH MICROCOMPUTERS

R.M.E. Sabbatini

Center for Biomedical Informatics, State University of Campinas, Brazil.


The interest in the use of computers to support the decision-making process in clinical medicine has increased sharply in the last years, mainly due to the availability of so-called medical expert systems. Its practical applicability, however, has beenvery limited so far, because they usually demand heavy computer power, are too large and complex, and cannot be altered or programmed easily by the end user. With the aim to produce an easy-to-use, field-programmable, small- scale system for aiding healthcare workers, we have developed MEDTREE. This is a stand - alone program, which runs in any 16-bit, IBM PC-compatible micro computers, with a minimum of 256 Kbytes of RAM and a single diskette drive, with the following main characteristics: a) it implements a data-directed binary decision tree or table (yes/no answers), traversed depth-first according to the answers given by the user to simple questions (presence/absence of symptoms, signs, indicators, conditions, etc.). b) it has provision for defining numerical utility and probability functions at each level of decision, in order to support weighing/decision- theoretical analysis; c) it has facilities for explanation, summarization of running evidence, comments, listing of decision targets and indicators, storage of results, etc.; d) it has powerful, easy-to-use facilities for defining, editing and listing decision- making procedures in any field, which are stored as separate files onto disk; e) it has an advanced, highly ergonomic user interface, with horizontal menus, context-sensitive help windows, etc. All texts and messages within the program reside in an auxiliary file and can be translated easily to any idiom, using a common word processing program. The simplicity and effectiveness of MEDTREE make it an ideal tool for health care health care applications in developing countries, since the end users are able to define and enter into the program their own decision-aid procedures, in an easy way. Furthermore, MEDTREE is flexible enough to support several algorithms of decision. Many medical decision procedures (diagnosis, risk evaluation, therapeutic protocols, interpretation of laboratory tests, etc.) have been implemented with MEDTREE, and are being tested in realistic environments in Brazil.


Published in:

Conferencia Internacional de Informatica Medica, Congreso Internacional de Informatica, La Habana, Cuba, Febr. 1988
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Last Updated: March 2, 1996

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