Decision analytic approach to severe head injury management.

• Main Authors: Harmanec D., Tze-Yun LEONG, Sundaresh S., Poh K., Yeo T., Ng I., Lew T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 1999
• Subjects: Computer Sciences; Health Information Technology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3010; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/4010/viewcontent/procamiasymp00004_0308.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Severe head injury management in the intensive care unit is extremely challenging due to the complex domain, the uncertain intervention efficacies, and the time-critical setting. We adopt a decision analytic approach to automate the management process. We document our experience in building a simplified influence diagram that involves about 3000 numerical parameters. We identify the inherent problems in structuring a model with unclear domain relationships, numerous interacting variables, and real-time multiple inputs. We analyze the effectiveness and limitations of the decision analytic approach and present a set of desiderata for effective knowledge acquisition in this setting. We also propose a semi-qualitative approach to parameter elicitation.