Augmenting knowledge-based medical systems with tacit healthcare expertise: towards an intelligent tacit knowledge acquisition info-structure

The knowledge-rich nature of the healthcare domain has made it an ideal environment for the application of knowledge-based techniques. However, the abstract nature of tacit healthcare knowledge has resulted in the under-utilization of such a vital component of the overall healthcare delivery system. Therefore, we present a six-step approach to procure tacit healthcare knowledge using healthcare scenarios. This process is supported by a healthcare scenario composer, which is a key component of a wider framework called the Tacit Knowledge Acquisition Info-Structure (TKAI). This information structure aims to combine the effectiveness of healthcare scenarios, ontologies and artificial intelligence techniques to facilitate the efficient acquisition, representation, refinement and dissemination of expert-quality tacit healthcare knowledge from/to healthcare experts.