Abstract

This paper presents a knowledge-based system for aiding in the decision-making process that is carried out in hospital management. There are a number of reasons that have led us to choose a tool such as this one: the amount of information generated in a hospital, its great interrelation and the need of heuristic knowledge for its processing.

The KBS has been designed following the KADS methodology. KADS has allowed us to obtain a structured representation of the knowledge, which makes easier both the construction and the debugging of the knowledge base. As a starting point, the decision-making task has been decomposed in four subtasks: monitoring; diagnosis; prediction of the possible solutions for the stated problem; and design of the solution.

The prediction task can only be performed through a simulation program where the dynamics of the hospital is modeled. This allows the system to detect the consequences of the application of different possible solutions. The co-operation between simulation and artificial intelligence has proven to be an adequate technique for dealing with the decision-making tasks that are involved with the management of complex organizations.

Author Keywords: Knowledge-based system; Decision-making; Discrete event system simulation; Hospital management

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Domain knowledge

3. Control knowledge

4. Monitoring task

5. Diagnosis task

6. Prediction task

6.1. Complex pieces of knowledge that are used in the prediction

6.1.1. Inference generate

6.1.2. Inference simulation

6.1.3. Inference selection

7. Design task

7.1. Complex pieces of knowledge used in the design task

7.1.1. Search of the global solution

8. Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Appendix A

References

Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-922-318-286; fax: +34-922-318-288; email: raguilar@ull.es