FACTS (Find the Appropriate Clinical Trials) for You: A Computer-Based Decision Support System for Breast Cancer Patients

Abstract

We report on accomplishments of Year 2 of a three-year award. In year 1, we have built a deterministic computer-based system to help patients and physicians select appropriate clinical trials for patients with advanced breast cancer. In year 2, we refined the deterministic system and introduced management of uncertainty in the form of belief networks. These networks are used to estimate values for unknown eligibility criteria given values for related variables. They are implemented in C++ and utilize belief-network software commercially available. We have utilized accepted standards for representing medical terminology and for expressing eligibility criteria in a computer-readable format. In particular, we have extended Arden syntax to deal with particular requirements of this application. In year 2, we redesigned the evaluation plans and propose a clinical trial for evaluation of the system in year 3. In this trial, a comparison of oncologists' performances with and without the system will be performed. The detailed plan, as well as its rationale is attached.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA386873

Entities

People

  • Lucila Ohno-machado

Organizations

  • Brigham and Women's Hospital

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Breast Cancer
  • Clinical Trials
  • Computers
  • Databases
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Graphical User Interface
  • Health Services
  • Information Systems
  • Medical Personnel
  • Neoplasms
  • Physicians
  • Public Health
  • Standards
  • Test And Evaluation
  • User Interface
  • Xml

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Medical or Health Care Field.