title: Evaluation of a knowledge-based decision-support system for ventilator therapy management.
abstract: Evaluation of knowledge-based systems differs from that of conventional systems in terms of verification and validation techniques. Furthermore, evaluating medical decision-support systems is difficult because the field is thus far comparatively unexplored. This paper presents an evaluation of a medical knowledge-based system called VentEx that supports decision-making in the management of ventilator therapy. Real patient data from 1300 hours of patient care involving 12 patients with 6 diagnoses are used to validate the knowledge base. The results range from 4.5% to 15.6% disagreement between the setting recommendations produced by VentEx and a gold standard, and 22.2% disagreement for recommendations for weaning. A comparison between the standard and two physicians showed that VentEx produced advice of the same quality as the physicians.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, Linköping University, Sweden.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Shahsavar
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Ludwigs
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Blomqvist
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gill
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Wigertz
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Matell
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual; D005103:Expert Systems; D006801:Humans; D010820:Physicians; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012121:Respiration, Artificial; D012140:Respiratory Tract Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted; D015300:Ventilator Weaning