Intelligent integration of medical models: a rigorous approach to resolving the dichotomy in medical models

Today, the dominant modeling concepts for medical information systems are based on: 1) "homeostasis", and 2) "physical dynamics"-such as those encountered in pharmacology, quantitative pathophysiology, and more recently in immunology. We introduce the novel idea of the hybrid system state which is used to provide a basis for modeling of medical systems and the carrier manifold which is used for analysis, design, and integration of medical models. We discuss the intelligent integration of what is now a dichotomy in medical models. The dichotomy we refer to occurs between the phenomenological models of high-level decisions and the evolution models of low-level dynamics. By intelligent we mean an explicit declaration of the rules: for composition of heterogeneous models. By rigorous we mean that, to the extent that the phenomenological models are correct, the evolution models are correct, and the composition rules are correct, our approach for integration of medical models will extract a correct, integrated program.<>