Webifying a patient interview support application

This paper reports on the software engineering challenges, and resultant benefits experienced, in porting an interactive, knowledge-based system from Microsoft Windows to the World Wide Web for evaluation purposes. The Patients Interview Support Application (PISA) is a program intended for operation by a non-expert clerk to interview an ambulatory primary care patient. The PISA code had to be re-written substantially to address the 'connectionless' nature of Web dialog and to work in terms of dynamically generated HTML forms; however, it was possible to avoid any revision of the central knowledge-base or inference engine. The resultant Web environment attracted thought-provoking and detailed feedback from users, indicating that significant attention can be obtained from the global community by mounting an interactive system on the Web. Specific enhancements to the PISA's artificial intelligence are suggested by user reaction. A future global health informatics 'marketplace' with a multidue of Web-based system components available for composition of health information systems is envisioned.