Issue 97029 | Editor: Erik Sandewall | 28.11.1997 |
Today |
Today's contribution by Miller and Kakas is a continuation of their discussion with Costello, although it also ties in with the general questions in the ontology debate. Also, take a look at the CfP quoted below -- it doesn't ask for papers in our area, but anyway it's quite interesting.
ETAI Publications |
Additional debate contributions have been received for the following article(s). Please click the title of the article to link to the interaction page, containing both new and old contributions to the discussion.
Antonis Kakas and Rob Miller
Reasoning about Actions, Narratives and Ramification
Application areas |
A while ago we had a plea from Austin Tate and from the present editor about the importance of participating in application areas where methods for reasoning about actions and change are important. The following CfP for a journal issue is interesting from this point of view. Notice that it first mentions research topics in our area, and then it proceeds to invite papers that steer in another direction. Therefore, although this particular issue does not focus on actions and change, still our area is put forward as highly relevant. Food for thought! - The editor.
BACKGROUND
The rapid growth of networking, both as the universally accessible Internet and as institutional intranets, has changed one of the fundamental premises of research in artificial intelligence in medicine. Until now, data were often not available in electronic format and professional users would rarely use computers in the course of their daily health care activities. Over the past several years, however, much has changed. Hospitals and large physician practices have installed sophisticated information systems that are truely replacing the paper record and therefore resolve the economic and social barriers to data and to professional users, respectively. Also, the universal acceptance of Web software technology and the promise of Java as a hardware-independent delivery platform have gone far toward resolving technical barriers to the delivery of expert computer technology in the clinical setting. It is fit, therefore, to reexamine the topic of decision support for clinical practice in the context of the new network paradigm that promises to empower both users and software developers.
Many fields of medicine are well-suited as domains for development of decision support systems as their clinical aspects become quantitative, causal, and reasonably well computerized. For example, cardiovascular medicine presents a number of challenges to computer scientists: multilevel causal modeling, reasoning at multiple time scales, reasoning simultaneously in space (anatomic localization) and time, and complexity of interpretation of real clinical records. These challenges obtain in many other areas of medical practice as well. As a practical matter, improved decision support and monitoring tools that improve patient outcomes can reduce health care costs while improving the quality of care. For these reasons, this progress in this area is timely and interesting not only to computer scientists and computer-literate health care providers, but also to health care organizations such as hospital and third-party payors.
OBJECTIVE OF SPECIAL ISSUE
The objective behind this special issue on "Net-based Decision Support in Medicine" is to report on both applied and reasonable theoretical developments. Applied reports describe implementation and validation of architectures. Because widespread availability of Net connections is so new, reasonable theoretical reports describe prototype systems that explore novel and useful concepts and are therefore worthy of consideration before they are fully validated.
More specifically, papers are expected to cover pertinent topics in networked decision support in medicine. Some examples are:
Additional topics will be considered: please send them promptly to the editor (see below) for informal review.
SCHEDULE
All the manuscripts submitted will be subject to a rigorous review process. The special issue will include 4-5 papers of 20-25 manuscript page each, plus an editorial. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the journal "submission guidelines" which are available on request.
January 1, 1998 Submission of tentative title and abstract to declare intention to submit paper. Email may be send to widman@sones.uthscsa.edu April 1, 1998 Receipt of full papers. Three copies of a manuscript should be sent to: Lawrence E. Widman, MD, PhD Division of Cardiology, Room 5.660U University of Texas Health Science Center 7703 Floyd Curl Drive San Antonio, TX 78284-7872 widman@sones. uthscsa.edu May 15, 1998 Notification of acceptance July 1, 1998 Receipt of final-version of manuscripts April, 1999 Publication of AIM special issue