DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEMS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

Relationships between decision-support systems and knowledge represent ation are examined from three different points of view: the characteri stics of medical decisions that might influence the selection of appro priate knowledge representations, - the extent to which different know ledge representations can support efficient medical decisions and, - t he validation of knowledge hypotheses through the practice of decision support systems. A three-level model of knowledge representation is p roposed that includes a contextual, a conceptual and a computational l evel. Taking into consideration the context that leads to the selectio n of a given representation raises the issue of multiexpertise and mul tirepresentation modeling, implementation of decision support systems as sets of cooperative agents and integration in the health informatio n systems are considered.