Decision support systems for medical diagnosis

Basically, the medical diagnosis process can be interpreted as a decision-making process, during which the physician induces the diagnosis of a new and unknown case from an available set of clinical data and from his/her clinical experience. This process can be computerized in order to present medical diagnostic procedures in a rational, objective, accurate and fast way. In fact, in the last two or three decades, diagnostic decision support systems have become a well-established component of medical technology. In this paper, we address our attention to the early detection of cancer on the basis of a small amount of clinical information. In order to develop a decision support system in this specific context, we emphasise the powerful efficiency and effectiveness of mathematical programming approaches as basic tools for developing medical diagnostic decision support systems.