Business Systems and Knowledge Modelling Lab

Research Project

Multimedia User Interfaces and Adaptive Multimedia Diagnostic System for Infectious Diseases

Research Goal
The current state of disparity between the prescription habits of general practitioners and therapeutic guideline recommendations (in the area of infectious diseases) has been empirically monitored (for last two years) and established by the “Inner South Eastern Division of General Practice” in Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. Some of the outcomes of the empirical study are that an alternative system needs to be developed for effective information gathering and for providing diagnostic and treatment support to practitioners in line with the guidelines.

An intelligent multi-agent multimedia clinical diagnostic and treatment support system has been developed with the following objectives:

1. To develop a multimedia system for effective and accurate information (symptomology) gathering
2. To develop an on-line adaptive diagnostic and treatment support based on multimedia diagnostic input data.
3. To develop capability in the system which can identify inconsistencies between treatments prescribed by practitioners and the corresponding guideline recommendations, on an ongoing basis.

The methods employed include a multimedia presentation design based on activity theory, industrial design, and human-computer interaction concepts for effective information gathering and presentation. The software modelling involves use of human centered problem solving agents (based on task based problem solving), intelligent technologies like self-organizing maps, back prop neural networks, knowledge based systems, multi-agents and objects.

A sample multimedia symptomology screen is shown below:

Acknowledgements
Therapeutic Guidelines Pty. Ltd., Alfred Hospital

Demonstrations
A working prototype has been developed

Team Members
Rajiv Khosla, Ken Harvey, Damien Phillips, Sussie Rogers

Publications
[1] R. Khosla, I. Sethi and E. Damiani, Intelligent Multimedia Multi-Agent Systems – A Human-Centred Approach (includes aspects related to socio-technical systems), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Massachusetts, USA,. October 2000, 333 pages

[2] R.Khosla and D. Phillips, Human-Centered Multimedia Multi-Agent Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Support System in Joint European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Medical Decision Making (AIMDM'99) - http://www.miba.auc.dk/AIMDM99/html/scien.htm, Denmark, June 1999