A Framework for Data and Mined Knowledge Interoperability in Clinical Decision Support Systems

Due to reliance on human knowledge, the practice of medicine is subject to errors that endanger patients’ health and cause substantial financial loss to healthcare institutions. Computer-based decision support systems assist healthcare personnel to improve quality of clinical practice. Currently, most clinical guideline modeling languages represent decision-making knowledge in terms of basic logical expressions. In this paper, we focus on encoding, sharing, and using results of data mining analyses to influence decision making within Clinical Decision Support Systems. A knowledge management framework is proposed that addresses the issues of data and knowledge interoperability by adopting healthcare and data mining modeling standards. In a further step, data mining results are incorporated into a guideline-based decision support system. A prototype tool has been developed to provide an environment for clinical guideline authoring and execution. Also, three real world case studies have been presented, one of which is used as a running example throughout the paper.