A constraint-based approach for the conciliation of clinical guidelines

Abstract

The medical domain often arises new challenges to Artificial Intelligence. An emerging challenge is the support for the treatment of patients affected by multiple pathologies (comorbid patients). In the medical context, clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are usually adopted to provide physicians with evidence-based recommendations, considering only single pathologies. To support physicians in the treatment of comorbid patients, suitable methodologies must be devised to “merge” CPGs. Techniques like replanning or scheduling, traditionally adopted in AI to “merge” plans, must be extended and adapted to fit the requirements of the medical domain. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology, that we term “conciliation”, to merge multiple CPGs, supporting the treatments of comorbid patients.