Web based medical decision support system: application of Internet to telemedicine

Abstract

In the early 1980s many medical expert systems were developed with a knowledge base acquired from medical experts, and their performance was almost as good as domain experts. However they weren't used frequently mainly due to the poor user interface and poor learning of new knowledge. However, solutions for these two problems began to be introduced in the 1990s. For the latter problem, machine learning methods have provided several solutions, and for the former problem, the rapid progress of Web technologies enables us to implement a good user interface. Furthermore, recent advances in computer resources strengthen these two solutions. We focus on the interface problem. Recent advances in Web technologies were used for an efficient interface of medical expert systems. The system was put on the Internet to provide an intelligent decision support in telemedicine and is now being evaluated by regional medical home doctors. The results show that such an Internet-based medical decision support enables home doctors to take rapid action.