Mathematical Foundations of Decision Support Systems

Abstract

Many computer applications may be considered to be clinical decision support systems. Programs that perform Medline searches or check drug interactions do support decisions, but they are not “clinical decision support systems” in the usual sense. What we usually mean by a clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a program that supports a reasoning task carried out behind the scenes and based on clinical data. For example, a program that accepts thyroid panel results and generates a list of possible diagnoses is what we usually recognize as a diagnostic decision support system, a particular type of CDSS. General purpose programs that accept clinical findings and generate diagnoses are typical diagnostic decision support systems. These programs employ numerical and logical techniques to convert clinical input into the kind of information that a physician might use in performing a diagnostic reasoning task. How these numerical techniques work is the subject of this chapter.