Computer-assisted decision making in medicine

This article reviews the strengths and limitations of five major paradigms of medical computer-assisted decision making (CADM): (1) clinical algorithms, (2) statistical analysis of collections of patient data, (3) mathematical models of physical processes, (4) decision analysis, and (5) symbolic reasoning or artificial intelligence (AI). No one technique is best for all applications, and there is recent promising work which combines two or more established techniques. We emphasize both the inherent power of symbolic reasoning and the promise of artificial intelligence and the other techniques to complement each other.