Web-tool to Support Medical Experts in Probabilistic Modelling Using Large Bayesian Networks With an Example of...

For many complex diseases, finding the best patient-specific treatment decision is difficult for physicians due to limited mental capacity. Clinical decision support systems based on Bayesian networks (BN) can provide a probabilistic graphical model integrating all necessary aspects relevant for decision making. Such models are often manually created by clinical experts. The modeling process consists of graphical modeling conducted by collecting of information entities, and probabilistic modeling achieved through defining the relations of information entities to their direct causes. Such expert-based probabilistic modelling with BNs is very time intensive and requires knowledge about the underlying modeling method. We introduce in this paper an intuitive web-based system for helping medical experts generate decision models based on BNs. Using the tool, no special knowledge about the underlying model or BN is necessary. We tested the tool with an example of modeling treatment decisions of Rhinosinusitis and studied its usability.