PROforma: a general technology for clinical decision support systems

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Abstract

The need for flexible and well understood knowledge representations which are capable of capturing clinical guidelines and protocols for decision support systems is widely recognised. The PROforma method for specifying clinical guidelines and protocols comprises a graphical notation for their design, and a formal knowledge representation language to enable them to be executed by a computer to support the management of medical procedures and clinical decision making. PROforma technology consists of a graphical knowledge editor for the creation of guidelines, and an enactment engine for testing and executing them. This paper provides an overview of the motivation and structure of PROforma, and illustrates its use in the development of clinical applications.

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    Different KB-DSSs have been developed to support the care process of a patient, from differential diagnosis [1] to treatment management. During the last two decades, many KB-DSSs have been developed as Computer-interpretable Guidelines (CIGs) represented in formalisms such as Asbru [2], GLIF [3], PROforma [4], SAGE [5] or GLARE [6] and enacted using their respective execution engines [7]. These tools have been created in order to provide real-time, knowledge-based decision support and recommendations to clinicians, based on the best known scientific evidence provided by clinical guidelines [8].

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