THEMPO - A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM FOR THERAPY PLANNING IN PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY

This article describes the knowledge-based system THEMPO (Therapy Mana gement in Pediatric Oncology), which supports protocol-directed therap y planning and configuration in pediatric oncology. THEMPO provides a semantic network controlled by graph grammars to cover the different t ypes of knowledge relevant in the domain, and offers a suite of acquis ition tools for knowledge base authoring. Medical problem solvers, ope rating on the oncological network, reason about adequate therapeutic a nd diagnostic timetables for a patient. Furthermore, a corresponding p atient record, also based on semantic networks and graph grammars, has been implemented to represent the course of therapy of an oncological patient. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.