Clinical Decision Support Systems: Medical knowledge acquisition and representation methods

Abstract

Constructing the Knowledge Base (KB) of the Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) is a crucial task that determines the success of the CDSS in general. The goal is to collect the medical knowledge from the relevant sources, systemize it and represent it in a formal human understandable and computer-interpretable manner. There are many different methodologies for acquisition and representation of the medical knowledge. This paper reviews and compares some of these methodologies to identify what has been achieved in the past and to provide directions for future research and improvements.