A DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT FOR KNOWLEDGE-BASED MEDICAL APPLICATIONS ONTHE WORLD-WIDE-WEB

The World-Wide Web (WWW) is increasingly being used as a platform to d evelop distributed applications, particularly in contexts, such as med ical ones, where high usability and availability are required. In this paper we propose a methodology for the development of knowledge-based medical applications on the web, based on the use of an explicit doma in ontology to automatically generate parts of the system. We describe a development environment. centred on the LISPWEB Common Lisp HTTP se rver, that supports this methodology, and we show how it facilitates t he creation of complex web-based applications, by overcoming the limit ations that normally affect the adequacy of the web for this purpose. Finally, we present an outline of a system for the management of diabe tic patients built using the LISPWEB environment. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sc ience B.V. All rights reserved.