title: Computer assisted psychiatric diagnosis: experiments in software design.
abstract: The process of psychiatric diagnosis involves the real-time utilization of large amounts of knowledge to maintain and test multiple hypotheses. Therefore, the development of an on-line computerized assistant that can aid a clinician performing psychiatric diagnoses presents challenging problems in data-base organization and retrieval. We have developed the DUNE (Diagnostic Understanding of Natural Events) system architecture that organizes the knowledge around processing structures. The system was designed as a shell for expert-systems that aid diagnoses and assessment tasks in ill-structured domains in general. These domains have previously proven unfeasible for traditional expert-systems such as rule based systems. Currently, DUNE contains sufficient knowledge to aid the diagnosis of anxiety and affective disorders. Among DUNE's advantages: a large degree of tolerance to clinician errors, and flexibility at run time. In this paper, we discuss the general specifications for a program that can aid psychiatric diagnoses, and then describe DUNE and its capabilities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, State University of New York, Buffalo 14260.
authors.forename: S L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Hardt
authors.forename: D H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: MacFadden
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D009862:Online Systems; D012984:Software; D012985:Software Design