title: The design and construction of a medical simulation model.
abstract: This paper describes the design, construction and validation of a probabilistic simulation model of patients who present with abdominal pain. The model incorporates text-book medical knowledge, clinical judgment, and statistics collected from real cases. The knowledge representation combines techniques of Bayesian network modelling with ideas of logistic discrimination. The model is shown to generate convincing, realistic cases; large numbers of artificial cases with no missing observations can be generated quickly. This should make the model a useful tool for investigating factors which limit achievable computer accuracy in the diagnosis of abdominal pain.
authors.affiliation: Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK.
authors.forename: B S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Todd
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stamper
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Macpherson
mesh_terms: D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000209:etiology; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D005260:Female; D005831:Genital Diseases, Female / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008875:Middle Aged; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011336:Probability; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity