Applications of the CBR Methodology to Medicine

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) means reasoning from experiences (old cases) in an effort to solve problems, critique solutions and explain anomalous situations. The CBR approach to problem-solving and learning has got a lot of attention within the Artificial Intelligence’s community over the last few years, because as an intelligent-systems’ method enables information managers to increase efficiency and reduce cost by substantially automating processes. In the present paper we study the development of the CBR methodology in the area of Medicine and Bio-Medical Informatics, where one can find some of the most common and useful CBR applications. Summarizing first the benefits of using expert support systems (e.g. CBR systems) in healthcare, we present next characteristic applications of the CBR methodology in the Medicine domain and we discuss the knowledge engineering issues which are crucial in developing CBR systems for any healthcare task.