Title:	A DOMAIN SPECIFIC CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR A MEDICAL EXPERT SYSTEM IN PSYCHIATRY, AND A DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
Author(s):	Irosh Fernando, Frans Henskens, Martin Cohen
ISBN:	978-972-8939-49-6
Editors:	Mário Macedo
Year:	2011
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Medical Expert Systems, Psychiatry, Knowledge Representation, Development Framework, Artificial Intelligence.
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	205
Last Page:	210
Language:	English
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Paper Abstract:	Despite the long pursuit of ways to develop practically useful medical expert systems, it still remains largely an unrealized goal. The difficulties in developing successful medical expert systems can be understood in relation to conceptual, computational and societal aspects of their development. In this paper we introduce a novel knowledge and reasoning model specific for psychiatry, along with a generic development framework for its design and implementation. Diagnostic reasoning in psychiatry involves eliciting phenomenology based on clinical symptoms and signs, and then diagnoses. The relationship between the severity of individual symptoms, and the degree of confirmation of likely diagnoses and their severity, are modeled using approximated mathematical functions based on expert clinical judgment. Each symptom is assigned a predictive value, and a weight according to its importance in relation to each likely diagnosis. Given a set of symptoms and their severity, the degree of confirmation of a likely diagnosis and its severity are calculated using the corresponding mathematical functions, predictive values and weights. The development framework provides a structured and a step-wise approach to identify and deal with conceptual, computational and societal issues. Using the development framework, we hope to implement our domain specific conceptual model as a web-based diagnostic and consultation system in psychiatry, and effectively address the issues in relation to computational and social aspects. We also hope that our approach will give insight to develop domain specific conceptual models in other medical subspecialties, and implement them successfully by adopting the development framework.
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