Medical Expert System

Conclusion

This screen shows medical Conclusion done by the system after Rules of logic were matched against the patient's Medical Records. It can be reached by 2 ways: either by selecting a patient in the Patient List and pressing the Research button or by entering patient's Medical Records form and pressing the Research button from there.

The medical conclusion can contain items of 3 types: Symptoms, Investigations, Diagnoses.
The system will ask for more Symptoms if they are necessary for better diagnostics. It can happen either if there is a Rule in the knowledge base telling us that some symptom should be asked or of the system has determined it automatically that some symptoms are missing. The latter will happen if at the opinion of the system there are rules, which may be triggered by these medical records but in order to clarify the situation more symptoms are necessary. This is really something, which makes the system work as an artificial intelligence entity - it will not only check the rules, which directly apply, but it will look for similar rules as well.

The Diagnoses and Investigations however will appear on the conclusion screen only if there are direct rules, which prescribe them. In this case the system does not take the liberty of interpreting results and finding the similar rules. For every diagnosis suggested the probability of that diagnosis will be shown as well.

According to the approach adopted by the system (see User Guide) the final decision about making diagnosis is always doctor's. That is why the system does not automatically put the diagnosis suggested into the patient's Medical Records even if the probability of the diagnosis is 100%. It only suggests the diagnosis. It is up to the doctor then whether to accept this suggestion or refuse it. And if the doctor agrees with the system he/she would put the diagnosis into patient's Medical Records himself/herself.

Ideally the Conclusion screen would contain only diagnoses but not symptoms or investigations. This is because if question about more symptoms are asked or further investigations are suggested within the conclusion it reflects the fact that situation with this patient is not 100% clear yet at this point. So, if diagnoses are not the only items in conclusion the doctor should proceed with this patient, ask him about additional symptoms, assign investigations and when completed add more information into the patient's Medical Records. This can be repeated many times (see User Guide). The process will be completed when conclusion contains nothing but diagnoses. At that point diagnoses are supposed to be specific rather than general and have high probability.

The system will give only new diagnoses on a Conclusion screen. Those already present in Medical Records will not be shown. The same applies to Investigations - the investigation will not be suggested if the patient has already passed it recently. This is why among other reasons it is very important to keep Medical Records fresh and up to date (see Medical Records for more detailed explanation on this subject).

When you've finished with Conclusion screen (and probably printed it) you can leave it by selecting another item from the system menu at any time.