EXPLOITING MULTIPLE GOALS AND INTENTIONS IN DECISION-SUPPORT FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF MULTIPLE TRAUMA - A REVIEW OF THE TRAUMAID PROJECT

Managing a patient with multiple injuries is a cognitively intense tas k. While protocols provide invaluable support for maintaining quality care, they generally address a single condition, while multiple trauma generally involves many. The TraumAID system tries to address this by providing tools for reasoning, planning, plan recognition and text ge neration which essentially coordinate and integrate multiple recommend ations from multiple protocols. This paper reviews work on all these t ools, including their (individual) evaluations, setting the work withi n a uniform conceptual framework of goals, intentions and actions. Bec ause TraumAID's use in real-time decision support depends critically o n electronic forms of information sharing and recording practices in t he Emergency Trauma Center, TraumAID continues to remain a laboratory exercise. Nevertheless, the general value of integrating multiple prot ocols for decision support justifies attention to the solution methods TraumAID provides. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved .