Horn clause techniques in rehabilitation clinic for return to work

Abstract

Rehabilitation therapy aims to enable disabled patients to maintain optimal functioning upon achieving return-to-work (RTW) approval. The Berg Balance Scale (BBS) is a benchmark for activity accomplishment featured in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health Framework (ICF). The ICF is used by physiotherapist (PT) and occupational therapist (OT) to determine the functional mobility of disabled patient. Conventionally, practitioners measure, record, and analyze assessment results manually which resulting in difficulty in predicting patient progression. The large data volume involved in the RTW process requires synthesize and reasoning for decision making purposes. Thus, there is a need to identify an efficient reasoning technique to facilitate the decision making process. This study highlights the use of Horn Clause in decision tree to assist medical doctor in assessing improvement of RTW approved patient based on the BBS assessment. The Horn Clause is one of the fundamental reasoning techniques applied in various domains including healthcare. The next phase of this study is to test the efficiency of the Horn Clause reasoning based on patient’s stroke recovery and spinal cord injury.