Argumentation theory in health care

Argumentation theory (AT) has been gaining momentum in the health care arena thanks to its intuitive and modular way of aggregating clinical evidence and taking rational decisions. The basic principles of argumentation theory are described and demonstrated in the breast cancer recurrence problem. It is shown how to represent available clinical evidence in arguments, how to define defeat relations among them and how to create a formal argumentation framework. Argumentation semantics are then applied over the built-framework to compute arguments justification status. It is demonstrated how this process can enhance the clinician decision-making process. A encouraging predictive capacity is compared against the accuracy rate of well-established machine learning techniques confirming the potential of argumentation theory in health care.