MediExpert: An Expert System based on Differential Diagnosis focusing on Educational Purposes

Abstract

The early and accurate identification of a disease is important for its effective treatment. However, medical errors represent a serious problem and pose a threat to patient safety. To this direction, appropriate and continuous education of the medical personnel has been widely recognized as an important mean to reduce medical errors and increase the quality of the health system. In this paper, we present MediExpert, an expert system targeting on continuous education of health personnel, providing also guidelines to persons that either cannot easily move due to age related comorbidities, or because they are away from healthcare units, further recommending users to talk with their doctors. It is based on differential diagnosis, employs ontologies for effective classification of health related problems and intelligent algorithms to enhance continuous education. We present the various components of the system and we elaborate on the benefits gained when using it for education.