Knowledge-based diagnosis -survey and future directions

Abstract

Diagnostic expert systems have long been considered an area where eventually a killer application might emerge1. Much time has passed since the first prototypes were demonstrated, but we have not yet seen it in the marketplace - despite many less spectacular success stories. Is the original idea doomed or will the technology finally live up to the expectations? In this paper we survey the state of the art with an emphasis on highlighting specific values of individual methods as well as considering the context of their use. The ultimate goal is to identify conditions and matching methods that will lead to the kind of success that pragmatist customers will find convincing - and then and only then, a real market presence will result. © 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.