Medical Decision Support Systems based on Soft Computing techniques

Medical Decision Support Systems (MDSS) are very important constructions that are incorporated into Intelligent Information E-Health Systems aiming to produce warnings or to consult and suggest clinical judgments either to inexperienced medical professionals or in their lighter versions to the general public through medical advisors websites. Soft Computing (SC) techniques, especially those that are based on exploiting human knowledge and experience, are extremely useful to model complex decision making procedures and thus, they have a key role in development such MDSS. Such a modeling methodology is Fuzzy Cognitive Maps which is suitable to represent human reasoning and to infer conclusions and decisions in a human-like way. In order to develop an integrated stand alone MDSS, Fuzzy Cognitive Maps could be complemented by other Soft Computing techniques such as Genetic Algorithms and/or Case Based Reasoning and so to construct more efficient advanced Medical Decision Support Systems. The synergism and complementary of these methodologies may pave the way to new sophisticated systems.