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Diabetes on the Web

Modern medicine no longer regards disease as a single entity triggered by single factors such as viral infection, environment, genetics, lifestyle, age or nutrition. Rather, it attributes cause to an interaction of all the aforementioned influencing factors. If this knowledge is accessible in a logical manner it can be coded and made available for use in computerised decision making - the expert system.

An expert system does not replace the human health practitioner who has the advantage of intuition and personal interaction with the patient but instead fulfils the role of an interactive reference source within a specified domain without the human disadvantages of : emotion, fatigue, attention lapses and prejudice.

Diabetes on the Web at the time of writing is the only known internet distributable expert system used to manage a medical condition. Though a functional model, due to the risks associated with self diagnosis it is only available as an educational project. The rules used in the DIABETES expert system were compiled from a separate research study ( see " Clinical evaluation of the DIABETES expert system for decision support by multiple regimen insulin dose adjustment" Ambrosiadou et al. 1995 ).

Diabetes on the Web is made technically possible by JESS - the Java Expert System Shell by Ernest Friedman-Hill and the Sandia National Laboratories in California.

The project was completed and awarded a Distinction at Masters degree level by the author, H D Fraser under the supervision of Dr Vivian Ambrosiadou at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield UK in August 2000.

H D Fraser MSc IIPEM


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