Abstract
The certainty required by the physician for establishing a diagnosis appears to bear a relationship to the therapeutic modality being considered. This suggests an approach to modeling of the decision-making process, in which evaluation of diagnostic hypotheses is viewed as a goal-directed activity, the goal of the physician being to establish a diagnosis beyond a ″threshold″ level of certainty which he requires to institute a particular therapeutic plan. Selection of diagnostic tests involves finding a sequence of tests that allows the goal to be reached, where escalation of testing from relatively non-invasive to more invasive levels also implies the existence of a threshold. This model can be represented by artificial intelligence techniques employing a modified production rule formalism. It is applied initially to modeling the evaluation of patients with upper abdominal pain. Usefulness of this approach relates to its emphasis on the role of goal-directed behavior in clinical reasoning, and the identification of areas in which threshold considerations appear to exist, so that the factors influencing them can be further characterized.
| Original language | English (US) |
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| Title of host publication | Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Conference Publications |
| Place of Publication | New York, NY |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Pages | 47-51 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| State | Published - 1979 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | Annu Symp on Comput Appl in Med Care, 3rd, Proc - Washington, DC, USA Duration: Oct 14 1979 → Oct 17 1979 |
Other
| Other | Annu Symp on Comput Appl in Med Care, 3rd, Proc |
|---|---|
| City | Washington, DC, USA |
| Period | 10/14/79 → 10/17/79 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Engineering