A PC-Based Shell for Clinical Information Systems with Reasoning Capabilities

With microcomputers now almost universally available in hospital departments, attention has shifted to the development of the clinical uses of such computers. One area in which much progress has been made is in small to medium scale medical information systems which are designed to log data from a selected group of patients or from a selected portion of the patient record [1]. These data are then used for patient followup, discharge summaries, or clinical research. Another important area which has received much attention is medical expert systems, where expertise in a given specialty is captured by the computer and made available to the medical staff as an electronic consultant [2].