Validation and evaluation of a system for thyroid disorders

摘要

The motivation for the development of the thyroid system has been to help clinicians manage the problem of information overload by supporting the utilization and interpretation of laboratory data. The output from the system is a report that includes a proposal for diagnosis and/or recommendations for extra tests. The diagnosis is proposed on the axis hypothyroidism-euthyroidism-hyperthyroidism.The motivation to evaluate this prototype system is to approach the specifications of the next generation system for the test interpretation in the domain of clinical chemistry. The methodology applied in this paper on the evaluation relates the life-cycle model of the development to the phases of evaluation. According to this methodology evaluation should be done through the whole development cycle. The life-cycle view to evaluation comprises a series of iterative phases during the design and development process and it emphasises the importance of feedback from expert collaborators and potential end-users. The evaluation study described in this paper describes development of a prototype system for thyroid disorders. Of special interest are the validity of the system in application and the acceptability of the system by the users.