Expert system for the diagnosis and treatment of preeclampsia

In this paper we present an Expert System for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Preeclampsia (ESPRE), a ruled-based medical expert system that supports diagnostic and therapeutic decisions in the realm of this disease and that is being used for training physicians. ESPRE applies pragmatic criteria for classifying, diagnosing, and treating preeclampsia. This system can guide the user to collect patient information easily, and based on those items of information that leads to the possible diagnose and treatment of preeclampsia. ESPRE has been deployed at Hospital Universitario de Los Andes, a large tertiary-care teaching hospital in Mérida, Venezuela, since June 1998. We describe the expert system design, and a predeployment performance evaluation. The features of ESPRE are presented, and the possibilities and limitations of its use as well as that of expert systems in general are discussed. Systems such as ESPRE require careful evaluation and, if proven effective and accurate, present to practitioners a new tool for delivering high-quality and individually adapted health care.