Developing dynamic decision support: opportunities, issues and approaches

As the speed increases with which Internet-related computer technologies develop, so do the pressures placed on human decision makers to leverage the new technologies to make better decisions, faster. Use of the vast information resources available through the Internet is changing from incidental, undirected acquisition to focused, outcome-oriented usage. The paradigm shift creates a concomitant need for decision support tools that enable users to amass data, extract information, apply knowledge to integrate the information, derive alternative courses of action, and assess outcome probabilities. We describe software research and development efforts to these ends.