Medical Decision Support Systems: the Objectivist Evaluation Core

1 Faculty of Informatics, Uinversity of Ulster, Jordanstown, Co. Antrim, U.K. BT37 0QB. E-mail [email protected] Abstract – Researchers and developers in the medical decision support field, are aware of the need for response to medical problem driven issues, rather than just an academic exercise. They recognise that their systems need to meet the specific goals of the domain requirements and also to have been thoroughly evaluated, for acceptability by clinicians. Evaluation can be thought of as being subjectivist and objectivist. Most papers on “evaluation” in the medical literature are subjectivist based and tend to gloss over the more formal objectivist approaches. Where assessment of errors are concerned, the alternative of mathematical literature tends to deal with complex classification theory issues. This means that there is a lack of guidelines of a practicable nature to allow the researchers to gauge what a sufficiency of evaluation is. This can lead to the core objectivist evaluation of performance accuracy receiving least attention. It is hoped to rectify this, by concentrating on the methodology of formal quantitative evaluation of system output and disseminating the information.