META-GLARE: A meta-engine for executing computer interpretable guidelines

Abstract

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) play an important role in medical practice, and computerized support to CPGs is now one of the most central areas of research in Artificial Intelligence in medicine. In recent years, many groups have developed different computer-assisted management systems of Computer Interpretable Guidelines (CIGs). We propose a generalization: META-GLARE is a “meta”-system (or, in other words, a shell) to define new CIG systems. It takes as input a representation formalism for CIGs, and automatically provides acquisition, consultation and execution engines for it. Our meta-approach has several advantages, such as generality and, above all, flexibility and extendibility. While the meta-engine for acquisition has been already described, in this paper we focus on the execution (meta-)engine.