Abstract
As part of a project to develop knowledge-based reminders for the outpatient setting, we developed a process to help maintain the quality of the knowledge base. The knowledge engineering process involved many parties, including several domain experts, a knowledge engineer, and a programmer and a process was necessary to assure that information transfer among individuals did not become confused. An MS Access database was created to store, among other data, textual versions of the rules as they evolved over time. In a 9-month period 36 rules were entered into the database. Of those, 17 are still active in their original form. The remaining 19 underwent various types of modifications; these changes were tracked in the database. Processes and tools to maintain knowledge bases are necessary if the benefits of clinical decision support systems are to be realized and investments in knowledge engineering are to be protected.
Full text
PDF
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Giuse D. A., Giuse N. B., Miller R. A. Evaluation of long-term maintenance of a large medical knowledge base. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 1995 Sep-Oct;2(5):297–306. doi: 10.1136/jamia.1995.96073832. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hripcsak G., Ludemann P., Pryor T. A., Wigertz O. B., Clayton P. D. Rationale for the Arden Syntax. Comput Biomed Res. 1994 Aug;27(4):291–324. doi: 10.1006/cbmr.1994.1023. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hunt D. L., Haynes R. B., Hanna S. E., Smith K. Effects of computer-based clinical decision support systems on physician performance and patient outcomes: a systematic review. JAMA. 1998 Oct 21;280(15):1339–1346. doi: 10.1001/jama.280.15.1339. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Jenders R. A., Huang H., Hripcsak G., Clayton P. D. Evolution of a knowledge base for a clinical decision support system encoded in the Arden Syntax. Proc AMIA Symp. 1998:558–562. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Kuperman G. J., Teich J. M., Bates D. W., McLatchey J., Hoff T. G. Representing hospital events as complex conditionals. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care. 1995:137–141. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Miller R. A., Gardner R. M. Summary recommendations for responsible monitoring and regulation of clinical software systems. American Medical Informatics Association, The Computer-based Patient Record Institute, The Medical Library Association, The Association of Academic Health Science Libraries, The American Health Information Management Association, and The American Nurses Association. Ann Intern Med. 1997 Nov 1;127(9):842–845. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-127-9-199711010-00014. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]