Medical Case-based Reasoning Systems: Experiences with Architectures for Prototypical Cases

In this paper we discuss the importance to create prototypes automatically within medical Case-based Reasoning systems. We present some general ideas about prototypes deduced from analyses of our experiences with prototype designs in domain specific medical CBR systems. Four medical Case-based Reasoning systems are described. As they use prototypes for different purposes, the gained improvement is different as well. Furthermore, we claim that the generation of prototypes is an adequate technique to learn the intrinsic case knowledge, especially if the domain theory is weak.