The evaluation of DSS SonaRes - The initial results

SonaRes is a decision support system for ultrasound diagnostics of hepato-pancreatic-biliary zone. It is intended to guide examination process, ensuring the access to a collection of images, finding similar images, generating the standardized reports. The system is destined to different categories of physicians. Its usefulness can be appraised only after an assessment made by the physicians, who give their views on the system´s usefulness. The system was tested by two groups of physicians: the experienced ones and interns, being conducted on a test sample of 132 patients with cholecystopathies. Users´ attitude was examined according to the following criteria: quality of conclusion, argumentation, obtaining a detailed report on detected changes. It was determined a higher positive perception of the novice users (including those in training). Both groups evidenced high appreciation of conclusions argumentation. The more experienced physicians showed less interest for conclusions generation.