M-HTP: A system for monitoring heart transplant patients

摘要

A computer-based assistant for monitoring a patient's clinical course requires the use of tools able to handle temporal issues. Thus, methodologies coming from two historically distinct worlds need to be combined: the traditional world of Data Base Management Systems (DBMS) and the world of Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS). This paper describes an intelligent system designed to assist the clinical staff in the management of a monitoring protocol for infections in heart transplant recipients. The system consists of a DBMS designed for the management of patient clinical data and of a KBS which is capable of reasoning about the large amount of data and embodied in a temporal model based on time-points and intervals. Moreover, the system aims at providing a synthetic view of a patient's clinical history and some diagnostic and therapeutic suggestions. The KBS retrieves findings stored in the data base and creates a complex taxonomy of objects representing a Temporal Network of important events and episodes noted in the patient history; then, from this temporal representation, it develops its reasoning based on medical knowledge represented using frames and production rules.The system is implemented on a Fourth Generation System tool (4GS) and a KBS shell, both running on an IBM PC AT compatible platform.