title: Decision analytic approach to severe head injury management.
abstract: Severe head injury management in the intensive care unit is extremely challenging due to the complex domain, the uncertain intervention efficacies, and the time-critical setting. We adopt a decision analytic approach to automate the management process. We document our experience in building a simplified influence diagram that involves about 3000 numerical parameters. We identify the inherent problems in structuring a model with unclear domain relationships, numerous interacting variables, and real-time multiple inputs. We analyze the effectiveness and limitations of the decision analytic approach and present a set of desiderata for effective knowledge acquisition in this setting. We also propose a semi-qualitative approach to parameter elicitation.
authors.affiliation: Medical Computing Laboratory, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore. davidh@comp.nus.edu.sg
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Harmanec
authors.forename: T Y
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Leong
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sundaresh
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Poh
authors.forename: T T
authors.initials: TT
authors.lastname: Yeo
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.forename: T W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Lew
mesh_terms: D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000145:classification / Q000628:therapy*; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D006801:Humans; D015599:Trauma Severity Indices