Development of medical decision support system for leukemia management

A prototype Medical Decision Support System (MDSS) for leukemia patients wa s developed with emphasis on total management approach from patient registr ation to diagnosis and treatment. Thus, the MDSS consists of four modules: registry, knowledge model, simulator, and Computer-Assisted Instruction (CA I). Integration of each module improves overall patient management capabili ty and knowledge acquisition capability of the system. Four different knowl edge models were developed to predict diagnosis: rule-based reasoning, case -based reasoning, neural network, and discriminant analysis. Among the four , rule-based reasoning produced the most accurate prediction in diagnosis. In the future, the method of leukemia registry can further be extended to t he hospital-based cancer registry for other types of cancer. In order to be more effective, the registry should also be integrated with the hospital i nformation system for an easier data entry. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.