Biomedical subjects

A Brai

Publications and source records attributed to A Brai.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1997

AUDILAB: a knowledge-based quality audit simulator for testing laboratories.

In order to obtain an accreditation, a laboratory must be prepared to provide a point-by-point check of various activities against the chosen reference standard, both from a general point of view and in relation to details of application. This paper describes AUDILAB, a computerized simulator accessible by network, able to provide testing laboratories with realistic quality audits performed in a customized way. AUDILAB establishes a detailed list of strengths (compliance with corresponding requirements of established standards) and weaknesses (improvements needed for laboratory's accreditation). The standard used by AUDILAB is the EN 45001 "General criteria for the operation of testing laboratories". A preliminary validation has already been completed. AUDILAB became operational in September 1993.

Artificial Intelligence↗

PubMed1996

[Management of bronchial infectious episodes in general medicine].

BACKGROUND: Acute bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations are frequent reasons for consultation with a general practitioner (GP). Since no consensus exists about the use of antibiotics in such indications and little is known about the use of pulmonary function tests in general practice, our objective was to describe GP's attitudes and prescription habits when faced with patients suffering from acute bronchitis (AB) or chronic bronchitis (CB) exacerbation. METHODS: The GPs participating in public health surveillance through the "réseau Sentinelles" (French Communicable Diseases Network) in March 1993 answered a postal questionnaire. This questionnaire collected their clinical attitude and prescriptions for 7 clinical cases of varying severity. RESULTS: 430 (94.7%) of the GPs answered the questionnaire. Of these more than 95% prescribed antibiotics in all the clinical cases, including for common acute bronchitis. Wide spectrum penicillins and macrolides were prescribed significantly less often as the past history increased in severity, whereas tetracyclins and oral cephalosporins were prescribed significantly more often in severe cases. Fluoroquinolones were nearly exclusively reserved for the treatment of advanced CB. Smoking cessation was systematically advised by the GPs. Faced with AB and a smoking history, 44.2% of the GPs prescribed a chest x-ray. In the case of repeat episodes of winter bronchitis, more than 70% of them evoked the diagnosis of CB. 98.% of the GPs had easy access to pulmonary function tests (PFTs) which 69.2% of the GPs prescribed as soon as CB was suspected. CONCLUSION: In the absence of a therapeutical consensus regarding bronchitis, antibiotics were prescribed virtually systematically. PFTs were not yet a routine gesture in general practice even though they were widely available and prescribed.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed1995

AUDILAB: quality audit simulation to prepare biomedical testing laboratories for accreditation.

In order to prepare biomedical laboratories for accreditation a quality audit simulator has been developed. By means of a dialogue with the laboratory, AUDILAB simulates the process by which the auditor identifies deviations or assesses conformity to the standard. AUDILAB is based on a knowledge processing system accessible via Minitel (French videotex terminal). With reference to the EN 45001 standard which is the European standard concerning the "General criteria for the operation of testing laboratories", it provides an assessment of the laboratory's degree of conformity and prompts it to take corrective action.

Accreditation↗

PubMed1995

ALERT: a clinical case simulator program for serious, communicable, and rare diseases.

ALERT is an intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) based on clinical case simulation. Its purpose is to assist in the training of general practitioners regarding the diagnosis and the control of serious, communicable, and rare diseases, such as anthrax, plague, and smallpox. ALERT provides both monitoring techniques and treatment protocols and is structured into two independent sections: one devoted to the simulation of the clinical case and the other to detailed description of disease.

Communicable Diseases↗

PubMed1994

An expert system for the analysis and interpretation of evoked potentials based on fuzzy classification: application to brainstem auditory evoked potentials.

EPEXS is an expert system for evoked potential analysis and interpretation (a medical examination performed in clinical neurophysiology laboratories), working from available clinical records and numerical data extracted from evoked potential traces. EPEXS integrates two formalisms of knowledge representation: rules and structured objects. The rules represent the elementary concepts (shallow knowledge) and include a model of possibility based on the Dubois and Prade default reasoning and possibility theory. The structured objects (prototypes) are organized as hierarchical taxonomies (underlying knowledge). These allow the description of both the objects and their relationships. The heuristics used to interpret knowledge are based on two hypotheses: the unicity of the pathological process leading to several given symptoms and the progression from the general to the specific, leading to the adoption or rejection of a class of diagnoses. This avoids the problem of the differential diagnosis. These sources of knowledge are used in a dynamical way that could be described as a four-step process: acquisition of clinical data in order to define the nosological frame of the pathology, production of hypotheses about the nature and topography of lesions, interpretation of data in accordance with these hypotheses, and finally evaluation of their likelihood. The validation shows that EPEXS topographic diagnoses were correct in 100% of cases and 92% of it nosologic diagnoses were correct, and no pathological record was interpreted as normal. When examined on a given pathology basis EPEXS was not significantly different from human experts as regards to performance, specificity, and sensitivity.

Computer Simulation↗