Integrating management and expertise in a computerised system for hypertensive patients

An expert system has been integrated to the data management system of the ARTEMIS programme for hypertensive patients. The patient database, which has been used since 1975, contains the medical records of about 20,000 patients. Information is interactively entered by physicians, nurses and secretaries on video display units. The computerised medical record has replaced the traditional handwritten medical record. The database management system is used to produce different summary reports (inpatient and outpatient care) and personalized recall letters which are mailed to the patients before their appointments. Suggestions provided by the expert system include additional information to be obtained (complementary patient interrogation, biological or radiological investigations, etc.), possible causes of hypertension, and medical prescriptions. The information base allows the description of both static knowledge (in the form of a semantic network) and dynamic knowledge (in the form of production rules). The inference system sequentially uses a combination of forward and backward chaining and performs both exact and approximate reasoning. The diagnostic performance of the expert system was evaluated in 100 cases of hypertension (50 of essential hypertension and 50 of secondary hypertension. Concordance between the diagnosis proposed by the expert system and the one proposed by the specialist was achieved in 92% of secondary hypertension cases and 88% of essential hypertension cases. It is suggested that the integration of data and knowledge management might enhance the overall acceptance by medical staff of a computerised system, and facilitate the validation of a knowledge base.