Medical Expert System

User Guide

Medical Expert Online - is the Rule based Web oriented system for automated diagnostics of medical conditions/diseases. The major purpose of the system is - to utilize the power of Internet to spread the expert knowledge of a few highly skilled advanced doctors - leading experts in their fields to a much broader medical staff - other doctors, registered nurses, etc. The very highly skilled doctors create their Rules of logic and store them in the system knowledge base. After that was done the system is able to make automated diagnoses suggestions based on patients' symptoms and research data (analyses, etc.).

The system knowledge base consists of the following basic informational components:

Diagnoses
Parameters (Symptoms and Research results)
Investigations
Rules of logic
(Click on the items above to read detailed description of every item)

System also stores database of patients and their Medical Records. After medical records for the patient are entered into the database the research can be made. This would apply Rules of logic to medical records facts and finally system would suggest which new Diagnoses can be made at that point (and with what probability), which Investigations need to be assigned and which other Symptoms (in addition to existing ones) this patient needs to be asked about. Later on, when investigations are completed new parameters (results of investigations) would be added to a patient's medical records and research process would start over again. Therefore the diagnostic process with this system is iterational. It will continue until the system will not be able to suggest more investigations or make new diagnoses.

So, the general diagnostic schema used by this system is:

Symptoms -> More Symptoms -> Investigations -> Diagnosis

where steps 2 and 3 can be repeated many times.

Although technically it is possible to create Rules of logic, which would suggest diagnoses based only on symptoms it is not advised to do so (except some very obvious and simple cases like general cold, simple acne, etc.) The right approach is: after original symptoms become known - ask for more symptoms and assign investigations. Make diagnosis only based on research results and not on original symptoms only. For example, if there are complains on chest pain and breath shortness we can guess with probability of 30% that it is angina, but we should not stop on it. We should at least request EKG and Blood test to be done for the patient and depending on the results obtained we can request even more investigations. Even if it is really angina and not something else we still need to investigate because angina is very general diagnosis and we need more specific one. So, it is unlikely that diagnosis will be obtained during the one working session with the system. Typically it will be more than one.

This actually matches the traditional approach to the patient's diagnostics when patient comes to the doctor repeatedly. Originally patient comes with only his/her symptoms. Some preliminary diagnosis with certain probability can be usually made at this point. Then after certain investigations assigned by doctor are completed (for example blood test or X-ray) patient would make a follow up visit. And this is until the final diagnosis is made by the doctor.

It is very important to note that this system is not supposed to replace the doctor ever. The primary purpose of the system is to give advises to the doctor, to point out some problems, which doctor (as a human person) may have forgotten about or overlooked. It is also clear that ordinal doctors may have less knowledge rather that very advanced and prominent ones, so they would benefit from consultation with the system, which is supposed to accumulate very advanced knowledge. But anyway the final decision is always doctor's. It is up to a doctor to whether to agree with the system suggestion or refuse it and assign his own investigation or make his own diagnosis.