Using clinical datafiles to improve expert systems efficiency

The validation of medical expert systems (MESs) is discussed. It includes the evaluation of the MES accuracy and the knowledge-base refinement. It is shown that the evaluation results can guide the experts to determine relevant modifications of the knowledge base. Moreover, analysis of the database can be used to extract additional numerical knowledge which can be used as a complement to the physician knowledge in order to improve MES efficiency. This methodology is applied to the septicemia expert system (SES), which is an expert system for severe infectious diseases. The results demonstrate the advantages of developing an MES in the context of a large clinical database.<
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