Decision support provided by a temporally oriented health care assistant: an implementation of computer-interpretable guidelines

Abstract

The automatic interpretation of clinical recommendations is a difficult task, even more so when it involves the processing of complex temporal constraints. In order to address this issue, a web-based system is presented herein. Its underlying model provides a comprehensive representation of temporal constraints in Clinical Practice Guidelines. The expressiveness and range of the model are shown through a case study featuring a Clinical Practice Guideline for the diagnosis and management of colon cancer. The proposed model was sufficient to represent the temporal constraints in the guideline, especially those that defined periodic events and placed temporal constraints on the assessment of patient states. The web-based tool acts as a health care assistant to health care professionals, combining the roles of focusing attention and providing patient-specific advice.