A PC-based interface for an expert system to assist with preoperative assessments

PREOP (short for preoperative assessment), a knowledge-based program, was developed to provide physicians with expert-level recommendations concerning the assessment and care of patients who are about to undergo surgery. An interface to PREOP is designed to provide clinicians with a user-friendly assessment tool. The interface is written in C language for Intel 80×86-based computers with the help of a toolkit of windowing functions. It represents an attempt to implement a mixed-initiative dialogue in which there is a two-way flow of information between the clinician and the expert system. This makes possible the arbitrary correction of user inputs. When complete, PREOP will be able to assess a wider range of risk factors and synthesize more sophisticated recommendations, using hypermedia interface techniques. A goal of this work is to evaluate the impact of artificial intelligence and expert system techniques on medical care