INTRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE BASES IN PATIENTS DATA MANAGEMENT-SYSTEM - ROLE OF THE USER-INTERFACE

As the number of signals and data to be handled grows in intensive car e unit, it is necessary to design more powerful computing systems that integrate and summarize all this information. The manual input of dat a as e.g. clinical signs and drug prescription and the synthetic repre sentation of these data requires an ever more sophisticated user inter face. The introduction of knowledge bases in the data management allow s to conceive contextual interfaces. The objective of this paper is to show the importance of the design of the user interface, in the daily use of clinical information system. Then we describe a methodology th at uses the man-machine interaction to capture the clinician knowledge during the clinical practice. The different steps are the audit of th e user's actions, the elaboration of statistic models allowing the def inition of new knowledge, and the validation that is performed before complete integration. A part of this knowledge can be used to improve the user interface. Finally, we describe the implementation of these c oncepts on a UNIX platform using OSF/MOTIF graphical interface.