title: Developing and using expert systems and neural networks in medicine: a review on benefits and challenges.
abstract: Complicacy of clinical decisions justifies utilization of information systems such as artificial intelligence (e.g. expert systems and neural networks) to achieve better decisions, however, application of these systems in the medical domain faces some challenges. We aimed at to review the applications of these systems in the medical domain and discuss about such challenges. Following a brief introduction of expert systems and neural networks by representing few examples, the challenges of these systems in the medical domain are discussed. We found that the applications of expert systems and artificial neural networks have been increased in the medical domain. These systems have shown many advantages such as utilization of experts' knowledge, gaining rare knowledge, more time for assessment of the decision, more consistent decisions, and shorter decision-making process. In spite of all these advantages, there are challenges ahead of developing and using such systems including maintenance, required experts, inputting patients' data into the system, problems for knowledge acquisition, problems in modeling medical knowledge, evaluation and validation of system performance, wrong recommendations and responsibility, limited domains of such systems and necessity of integrating such systems into the routine work flows. We concluded that expert systems and neural networks can be successfully used in medicine; however, there are many concerns and questions to be answered through future studies and discussions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Information Management, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Enghelab Sq., Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, a_shtaheri@razi.tums.ac.ir.
authors.forename: Abbas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sheikhtaheri
authors.forename: Farahnaz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sadoughi
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hashemi Dehaghi
mesh_terms: D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005103:Expert Systems; D006801:Humans; D051188:Knowledge Bases; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer