Application of information technology - A UMLS-based knowledge acquisitiontool for rule-based clinical decision support system development

Decision support systems in the medical field have to be easily modified by medical experts themselves. The authors have designed a knowledge acquisit ion tool to facilitate the creation and maintenance of a knowledge base by the domain expert and its sharing and reuse by other institutions. The Unif ied Medical Language System (UMLS) contains the domain entities and constit utes the relations repository from which the expert builds, through a speci fic browser, the explicit domain ontology. The expert is then guided in cre ating the knowledge base according to the pre-established domain ontology a nd condition-action rule templates that are well adapted to several clinica l decision-making processes. Corresponding medical logic modules are eventu ally generated. The application of this knowledge acquisition tool to the c onstruction of a decision support system in blood transfusion demonstrates the value of such a pragmatic methodology for the design of rule-based clin ical systems that rely on the highly progressive knowledge embedded in hosp ital information systems.