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Biomedical subjects

J R Slagle

Publications and source records attributed to J R Slagle.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Monitor: an expert system that validates and interprets time-dependent partial data based on a cystic fibrosis home monitoring program.

The use of health diaries to monitor patients with chronic diseases has often been complicated by difficulties encountered in data quality assurance and interpretation. An expert system, Monitor, has been developed to predict the health status of cystic fibrosis patients based on daily home measurements of pulse, respiratory rate, weight, inspired vital capacity, and a check list of symptoms of acute illness. This system ensures data reliability beyond what can be achieved in most current automatic error detection procedures by validating inputs against patient-specific expectations. Its explicit representation of the time dimension and the hierarchical structure of its knowledge base facilitate the abstraction of trends and relationships among the time-dependent data. Dynamically imposed expectations also lend flexibility to the interpretation process by allowing the processing of partial (incomplete) data. Monitor correctly classified 86 percent (three-category classification) and 94 percent (two-category classification) of 111 cases. This demonstrates that expert systems can be a feasible approach in building more robust diary monitoring systems.

Cystic Fibrosis↗
PubMed1988

Using a symbiotic man/machine approach to evaluating visual clinical research data.

Some candidate medical expert system applications have a significant visual component. Knowledge engineers usually dismiss such task domains as potential expert systems applications. Our success in developing ESCA, a system for evaluating serial coronary angiograms, shows that such task domains should not be dismissed so quickly. We used a symbiotic approach between man and machine, where technologists provide the visual skills with an expert system imitating the conceptual skills of the expert, to produce a partially automated system that is more consistent and cost effective than one that is fully manual. The agreement between the system's conclusions and that of a panel of experts is good. The expert system actually has a slightly higher agreement rate with the expert panel than the agreement rate between two expert panel teams evaluating the same film pair.

Angiocardiography↗
PubMed1987

An example of expert systems applied to clinical trials: analysis of serial graded exercise ECG test data.

Clinical trials collect large amounts of data over time. The use of statistical methods to compare and interpret these serial data often fall short of complete evaluation because the analysis requires clinical judgment. As an alternative, some trials use individual experts or panels of experts to evaluate data, but this method usually requires the participation of clinicians who must spend large amounts of time performing tedious, repetitive tasks. The authors examined the use of expert systems to analyze serial clinical trial data where the analyses required use of clinical judgment. A prototype expert system was built to assess the data obtained from a pair of serial graded exercise ECG tests and reach a decision that would duplicate the decision reached by a cardiologist. The experiment was successful. Expert systems should be further developed and tested in other areas, such as serial coronary arteriography data.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗