Integrating knowledge-based systems and databases

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest among the computing community in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly in the areas of natural language processing and knowledge-based systems (KBS). The medical domain has seen the development of hundreds of KBSs and there is substantial evidence to show that the application of a knowledge-based approach to decision support can go a long way towards overcoming the information overload experienced by many clinicians today. Yet many of these medical KBSs are still at the prototype stage and are mainly confined to research laboratories. There are many reasons for this apparently slow take-up of the technology, but one of the most significant is the lack of integration into the regular routine information processing of the organisation, in particular the database processing. This paper discusses the benefits of such integration and methods for achieving it in the context of general trends in information systems. Database technology provides efficient and secure management of large amounts of data in a multi-user, multi-application environment. Knowledge-based technology, on the other hand, provides mechanisms for building intelligent systems. Thus, for example, given a set of facts about a domain (symptoms, laboratory test results, etc.) together with a set of rules which apply to that domain (e.g. 'if TT4 > 150 nmol/l then suspect hyperthyroidism'), a KBS can deduce new information about that domain automatically. The effective integration of these two technologies is seen as a means of achieving the intelligent information systems of the future. There are three basic approaches to integrating KBSs and databases. The first is to start with the KBS and incorporate data management functions. Alternatively, intelligence from the KBS can be incorporated into the database. Finally, the two systems can be allowed to co-exist as independent systems which can talk to each other by means of standard interfaces. There are many advantages to this last approach since it offers much more flexibility and extensibility and is consistent with the general trend in computing towards open systems.