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Supporting breast cancer decisions using formalized guidelines and experts decision patterns: initial prototype and evaluation

Health Information Science and Systems volume 5, Article number: 12 (2017) Cite this article

Abstract

Transparent decisions and its documentation of breast cancer patients’ therapy are getting more important especially since modern therapeutic approaches favor personalized forms of treatment. The medical decisions for a treatment are very complex, because there are rules and different options for each patient. To support the decision process, we analyzed the current decision rules and implemented them in a prototype of a rule-based expert system. Thus, this system shall support the quality assurance regarding transparent documentation of individualized therapeutic decisions. For evaluating the system, we used data from a state tumor center and compared the decisions suggested by our system with expert ones. The system and the expert approach will be compared with each other as well as the differences in the treatment decisions. The first preliminary results show us that the human factor—like must be considered by creating a decision support system. The prototype delivers first results, which are restricted, but the results are promising for further developments.

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Notes

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Acknowledgement

Parts of this contribution were carried out within the project Baltic Sea Campus on eHealth (2015–2018) funded by an excellence grant of the German federal state of Schleswig–Holstein. The authors are pleased to acknowledge all supporting participants. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the state of Schleswig–Holstein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science, University of Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Straße 22, 18059, Rostock, Germany

    Dennis Andrzejewski & Michael Fellmann

  2. Institute for eHealth and Management in Healthcare, Flensburg University of Applied Sciences, Kanzleistraße 91 – 93, 24943, Flensburg, Germany

    Rüdiger Breitschwerdt

  3. Department of Computer Science and Media, Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Magdeburger Straße 50, 14770, Brandenburg, Germany

    Eberhard Beck

Authors
  1. Dennis Andrzejewski
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  2. Rüdiger Breitschwerdt
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  3. Michael Fellmann
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  4. Eberhard Beck
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Correspondence to Dennis Andrzejewski.

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Andrzejewski, D., Breitschwerdt, R., Fellmann, M. et al. Supporting breast cancer decisions using formalized guidelines and experts decision patterns: initial prototype and evaluation. Health Inf Sci Syst 5, 12 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13755-017-0035-8

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Keywords

  • Breast cancer treatment
  • Decision support
  • Tumor board