The Benefits of Expert Systems in Health Care. Practical Experiences from CATEG05-ES

Abstract

Practical personal computer based Expert Systems offer benefits in many areas of health care. However for expert system technology to be useful there is a need to produce a cost effective way of developing practical user friendly systems. Building systems which provide an environment for experts to develop and test disease models is a particularly challenging application. This paper briefly discusses the benefits and shortfalls of expert systems that are currently available. In this context it outlines the development of CATEG05-ES, a successful expert system currently being used on a World Health Organisation project to improve the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis. The system allows experts without experience of computers to build and evaluate complex disease models or psychiatric schedules which condense symptoms, pathological factors and social factors into international disease classifications.