title: Medical decision-support systems and the concept of context.
abstract: Medical decision-support systems are of necessity multi-contextual in nature. There are always at least two contexts involved in the use of such systems: the expert knowledge-provider context and the end-user context. To show this, we present examples of context-dependent aspects significant to the use of decision-support systems. The existence of discrepancies between the contexts threatens to disrupt the rationale for using decision-support systems: for the system to transfer knowledge from the expert to the end-user. Both theoretical and empirical studies show that such discrepancies exist and that they may be detrimental to the use of decision-support systems. Systems must thus give support in interpreting the output produced by the system in the context of the end-user.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Informatics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Linköpings Universitet, SE-581 85 Linköping, Sweden. danka@imt.liu.se
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Karlsson
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Forsum
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D003144:Communication Barriers; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D005103:Expert Systems / Q000295:instrumentation; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods; D020380:Needs Assessment; D012718:Set, Psychology; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface