Expert design knowledge: a case study in dental education

Abstract

The expertise of teachers of prosthetic dentistry in partial denture design (the design of removable partial denture, a type of dental prosthesis) has been elicited by identifying a collection of design rules and sampling expert reaction to them by first surveying 10 experts individually and then the prosthetic departments in all 1 7 dental schools in the British Isles. The surveys revealed an unsuspected consensus concerning the rules. This design expertise will be disseminated through RaPiD, a knowledge based assistant for the design of partial dentures. It is expected that by incorporating assistant rules into this design, which have been shown to be widely supported, the acceptability and usefulness of RaPiD for clinical education will be increased. In order to facilitate the incorporation of these rules into RaPiD semi-automated translation, rather than hand coding as PROLOG programs, is being investigated. Main conference themes: artificial intelligence, tutoring Educational areas: higher education Study topics: life sciences/medicine Secondary keywords: computer aided design, expert systems, knowledge based