Expert Doctor Verdis: Integrated medical expert system

Abstract

Innovative medical technologies are developing day by day, as there is an important need for integrated medical expert systems (ESs) that will help to effectively manage and control diagnosis and treatment processes. These systems, with new approaches, have improved the experiences and capabilities of physicians to make the diagnosis of diseases. In this work, an integrated medical ES called Expert Doctor Verdis (Ex-Dr Verdis) is developed, which combines an advanced medical information system containing various medical services supported by information technologies, with ES capabilities in a single system. This system is also one kind of decision support system. Implementation of this system is applied for vertebral column diseases. Ex-Dr Verdis is a strong decision support tool with 94% sensitivity, 71% specificity, 87% positive, and 86% negative predictive values for the diagnosis of vertebral diseases. In addition to its facilities of medical information, Ex-Dr Verdis, with a sharing platform, provides physicians with the opportunity to share and discuss their own patients, cases, experiences, and expert knowledge with other colleagues. This integrated medical ES can be used in all hospital services, such as hematology, neurology, or cardiology, by adding new expert modules for other diseases.