Medical Expert Systems- You Won't Work Without Them, Once You Know Them

Recent years have seen an enormous development in the field of medical expert systems, making it a time consuming and complicated task for physicians finding the system most capable for them. To give physicians the opportunity to get fast and easy access to a specific system, our department has developed a web site which intends to be a comprehensive source for physicians, students and other health-care professionals in providing information on over 65 worldwide` available medical expert and knowledge-based systems. Medical Expert Systems: Doctor’s Silent Partners Our web page will be a unique collection of over 65 state-of-the-art medical expert systems and knowledge based systems. An expert system is an Artificial Intelligence program that uses knowledge to solve problems that would normally require a human specialist. Expert systems are one of the most successful commercial applications of Artificial Intelligence and they are used in many different areas. In medicine, expert systems have been developed to assist the physicians in a hospital or in his office in the course of interpreting medical findings, providing diagnostic support and therapy advice, giving hints for disease prognosis, guiding patient management, and monitoring hospital and patient’s medical data and costs. Expert systems and knowledge based systems in medicine help in the manipulation and application of expert medical knowledge. The growing complexity of the fund of knowledge makes the application of such systems more and more indispensable. The amount of medical knowledge is such that today no physician can access or memorize all the necessary information in his daily practice. Therefore, in an attempt to minimize the incidence of misdiagnosis, physicians are increasingly looking to expert systems to corroborate their findings and/or highlight anomalies and errors. Provided that expert systems are used correctly, they also reduce much of the repetitive and specialized mental efforts made by the treating physicians and enable him to devote his time and attention to the personal care of the patient. Another reason, why decision support technologies are becoming more and more important in medicine is their benefit in cost reduction. For example, expert systems allow the dissemination of information held by one or a small number of experts. This makes the knowledge available to a larger number of people, and less skilled (so less expensive) people, reducing the cost of accessing information. Additionally, human expertise about medical subjects in question is not always available when it is needed. This may because the necessary knowledge is held by a small group of medical experts, who may not be in the right place at the right time. Alternatively it may be because the knowledge is distributed through a variety of sources and is therefore difficult to assimilate.