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Expert Systems in Medicine.

 An expert system...

  • ...has a large database of knowledge.

  • ...allows the database to be interrogated.

  • ...has a set of rules (inference engine) for making deductions.

An expert system is a computer system which simulates the knowledge and expertise of a human expert.

For example, in Medicine, expert systems are being used for disease diagnosis.

The patient's details and symptoms are input, and the system outputs probable diagnoses, recommended treatments or drugs which may be prescribed.

 

Expert systems are not really replacing doctors but are being used to help them. There are ethical and legal reasons for this - if a computerised diagnosis is wrong, who do you sue?
Some patients would feel happier typing medical information into a computer than discussing it with a human doctor...but others would prefer the 'human' touch.

 
The advantages of an expert system over a doctor are...
  • ...a large database of knowledge can be added to and kept up-to-date - it can store more knowledge than a person.
  • ...the system cannot 'forget' or get facts wrong.
  • ...it survives forever. There is no loss of knowledge as there is when a doctor retires.
  • ...the computer can access specialist knowledge that a doctor may not have.

 

An expert system would be programmed using an AI (Artificial Intelligence) language such as PROLOG.