Abstract:
Knowledge-based systems for medicine have enjoyed minimal success in developing countries
as end-user systems. The reasons for this are complex. As funding agencies understandably
tend to err on the side of caution, and knowledge-based systems are still (despite
an almost 40 year history) seen as a new and untried technology, few have been implemented.
Of those which have, most are inappropriately simple and thus do not fit in with the
real-life clinical environment. In contrast to the sophisticated systems in use in
developed countries which reflect a mature technology, the use of knowledge-based
systems in medicine in developing countries has primarily revolved around simple ‘expert’
systems, where the program functions more as a ‘guru’ than as a support function.
We propose the more appropriate use of these systems as educational tools in medicine.
In this discussion paper we describe a multi-level programme to support medical education,
focusing on patient information systems involving natural language generation, decision-support
systems as educational aids for primary health-care workers and model-based reasoning
tools which allow exploratory learning for physicans in training. Throughout this
paper we refer to Knowledge-Based Medical Education Systems as KBMES.
Keywords:
Medical Education - Knowledge-Based Systems - Developing Countries
