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Developing and Using Expert Systems and Neural Networks in Medicine: A Review on Benefits and Challenges

  • Transactional Processing Systems
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Abstract

Complicacy of clinical decisions justifies utilization of information systems such as artificial intelligence (e.g. expert systems and neural networks) to achieve better decisions, however, application of these systems in the medical domain faces some challenges. We aimed at to review the applications of these systems in the medical domain and discuss about such challenges. Following a brief introduction of expert systems and neural networks by representing few examples, the challenges of these systems in the medical domain are discussed. We found that the applications of expert systems and artificial neural networks have been increased in the medical domain. These systems have shown many advantages such as utilization of experts’ knowledge, gaining rare knowledge, more time for assessment of the decision, more consistent decisions, and shorter decision-making process. In spite of all these advantages, there are challenges ahead of developing and using such systems including maintenance, required experts, inputting patients’ data into the system, problems for knowledge acquisition, problems in modeling medical knowledge, evaluation and validation of system performance, wrong recommendations and responsibility, limited domains of such systems and necessity of integrating such systems into the routine work flows. We concluded that expert systems and neural networks can be successfully used in medicine; however, there are many concerns and questions to be answered through future studies and discussions.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Information Management, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Enghelab Sq., Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Abbas Sheikhtaheri

  2. Department of Health Information Management, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Farahnaz Sadoughi

  3. Eye Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Zahra Hashemi Dehaghi

Authors
  1. Abbas Sheikhtaheri
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  2. Farahnaz Sadoughi
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  3. Zahra Hashemi Dehaghi
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Correspondence to Abbas Sheikhtaheri.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Transactional Processing Systems

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Sheikhtaheri, A., Sadoughi, F. & Hashemi Dehaghi, Z. Developing and Using Expert Systems and Neural Networks in Medicine: A Review on Benefits and Challenges. J Med Syst 38, 110 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-014-0110-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-014-0110-5

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