"Electronic Pediatrician", a non-machine learning prototype artificial intelligence software for pediatric computer-assisted pathophysiologic diagnosis - general presentation.

Background: Knowledge-based systems (KBS) are software applications based on a knowledge database and an inference engine. Various experimental KBS for computer-assisted medical diagnosis and treatment were started to be used since 70s (VisualDx, GIDEON, DXPlain, CADUCEUS, Internist-I, Mycin etc.).

Aim: To present in detail the "Electronic Pediatrician (EPed)", a medical non-machine learning artificial intelligence (nml-AI) KBS in its prototype version created by the corresponding author (with database written in Romanian) that offers a physiopathology-based differential and positive diagnosis and treatment of ill children.

Methods: EPed specifically focuses on the physiopathological reasoning of pediatric clinical cases. EPed has currently reached its prototype version 2.0, being able to diagnose 302 physiopathological macro-links (briefly named "clusters") and 269 pediatric diseases: Some examples of diagnosis and a previous testing of EPed on a group of 34 patients are also presented in this paper.

Results: The prototype EPed can currently diagnose 269 pediatric infectious and non-infectious diseases (based on 302 clusters), including the most frequent respiratory/digestive/renal/central nervous system infections, but also many other non-infectious pediatric diseases like autoimmune, oncological, genetical diseases and even intoxications, plus some important surgical pathologies.

Conclusion: EPed is the first and only physiopathology-based nml-AI KBS focused on general pediatrics and is the first and only pediatric Romanian KBS addressed to medical professionals. Furthermore, EPed is the first and only nml-AI KBS that offers not only both a physiopathology-based differential and positive disease diagnosis, but also identifies possible physiopathological "clusters" that may explain the signs and symptoms of any child-patient and may help treating that patient physiopathologically (until a final diagnosis is found), thus encouraging and developing the physiopathological reasoning of any clinician.