AN ARCHITECTURE FOR KNOWLEDGE-BASED CONSTRUCTION OF DECISION-MODELS

Clinical application of decision analysis has been limited by unfamili arity bf clinicians with the technique, large data requirements, and t he length of time. needed to construct models. In order to make decisi on modeling more accessible to clinicians, the authors developed a com puter program to construct decision models automatically. The system c ontains two separate knowledge bases. One contains frames encoding kno wledge of the medical domain, the evaluation of pulmonary disease in p atients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The othe r contains rules of correct decision model construction that guide the selection of items from the domain knowledge base and their insertion into the decision model. The system can create either a tree or an in fluence diagram that satisfies previously published critiquing rules. The system has the potential to enable novices to construct useful dec ision models and to provide individualized decision-analytic advice to clinicians in real time.