Knowledge Acquisition and Veritication Tools for Medical Expert Systems

Abstract

Expert systems require large amounts of domain knowledge for non-trivial problem solving. Experience in developing such systems has shown that the processes of acquiring domain knowledge (knowledge acquisition) and of determining whether the knowledge is consistent, complete, and correct (knowledge verification) are major problems. This paper discusses various tools developed to assist in these two processes. These tools bring additional knowl edge to bear, or provide better interfaces between a knowledge engineer and the expert system's knowledge. Key words: expert systems; knowledge-based systems; artificial in telligence ; knowledge acquisition; knowledge verification. (Med Decis Making 7:6-11,1987)