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ArgMed: A Support System for Medical Decision Making Based on the Analysis of Clinical Discussions

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Real-World Decision Support Systems

Part of the book series: Integrated Series in Information Systems ((ISIS,volume 37))

Abstract

This paper presents the design, development and experimentation of ArgMed, an interactive system aimed at supporting decision making processes that occur during clinical discussions. Clinical discussions take place on a regular basis in hospital wards and provide the forum for specialists of various medical disciplines to focus on critical cases, debate about diagnostic hypotheses, therapeutic protocols or follow-up of patient conditions, and to devise the most appropriate treatments. However, in the current medical practice, clinical discussions are usually not documented, and only the final decision is recorded on patient medical records. Therefore, some decision alternatives may get lost, the justifications for decisions made are not clarified, and the reasons in favor or against a diagnosis or a treatment remain implicit. ArgMed addresses these issues by supporting (1) the representation of discussions in a structured yet intuitive way, (2) the formalization of discussions from a logical perspective on the basis of a set of reasoning patterns (argumentation schemes) that are considered valid in the specific medical domain, (3) the identification of plausible conclusions, as well as invalid reasoning steps, hidden assumptions, or missing evidences. The paper describes the approach adopted for ArgMed design, the system architecture and operation, and the knowledge-based engine that implements decision support. The results of a preliminary experimentation of ArgMed in a real clinical environment are finally discussed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From the experimentation it emerged that documenting a discussion in real-time is time consuming, thus the physicians judged the second option a more viable practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy

    Malik Al Qassas, Daniela Fogli, Massimiliano Giacomin & Giovanni Guida

Authors
  1. Malik Al Qassas
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  2. Daniela Fogli
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  3. Massimiliano Giacomin
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  4. Giovanni Guida
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Correspondence to Daniela Fogli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Jason Papathanasiou

  2. Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Nikolaos Ploskas

  3. Dept. of Business Administration, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

    Isabelle Linden

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Al Qassas, M., Fogli, D., Giacomin, M., Guida, G. (2016). ArgMed: A Support System for Medical Decision Making Based on the Analysis of Clinical Discussions. In: Papathanasiou, J., Ploskas, N., Linden, I. (eds) Real-World Decision Support Systems. Integrated Series in Information Systems, vol 37. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43916-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43916-7_2

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