The Role of Medical Expert Systems in Pakistan

Expert systems are used extensively in many domains. This paper discusses the use of medical expert systems in Pakistan. Countries all over the world pay special attention on health facilities. A country like Pakistan faces a lot of trouble in health sector. Several attempts have been made in Pakistan to improve the health conditions of the people but the situation is still not encouraging. There is a shortage of doctors and other trained personnel in Pakistan. Expert systems can play a vital role in such cases where the medical expert is not readily available. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role that such systems can play in improving the health conditions of the people in Pakistan. Keywords—Medical Diagnostics, Expert Systems, Pakistan. I. AN OVERVIEW OF EXPERT SYSTEMS XPERT systems are computer programs that are meant to solve real world problems. In normal routine these problems are solved by domain experts who are experts in their respective domains. Thus the knowledge has to be extracted from the domain expert in order to develop an expert system. Extracting the knowledge from a domain expert and to convert it into a computer program is a difficult task. This task of extracting the knowledge from a domain expert is performed by a Knowledge Engineer. The knowledge engineer provides useful assistance to domain experts in determining the representation of knowledge. If the knowledge is represented in the form of rules then such systems are called Rule-based expert systems. Different techniques have been developed for knowledge acquisition. Fig. 1 shows different modules for a rule-based expert system. Fig. 1 Expert System Architecture [1] Authors are with Department of Computer Science and IT, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan. The interaction with the expert system is made through User Interface [6]. The interaction is performed through an interactive dialog, an example of which is given below [6]: Q. Do you have good mathematical skills? A. Yes. Q. Do you have good statistical skills? A. Yes. Q. Have you studied physics previously? A. No. Q. How much marks you got in your Bachelor studies? A. 650. The Knowledge Base is the heart of an expert system. Typically the knowledge base is in the form of IF-THEN rules. The inference engine finds a sequence in which inferences are made. The inference engine is used to reason with the knowledge base. In forward chaining rule-based systems Case Specific Data is also called Working Memory [1]. The working memory contains the result of inference process. Expert systems also facilitate the users by providing Explanation Subsystem. The explanation subsystem explains its reasoning to the users. Knowledge base editor is provided in some systems for writing and updating the knowledge base. Expert systems have the ability to separate problem specific knowledge from general purpose reasoning. This general purpose block (as shown in Fig. 1) without any domain specific knowledge is called skeletal systems, or expert system shells. Many commercial shells are available these days. Thus expert systems are a combination of expert system shell and domain specific knowledge. Expert System= Expert System Shell + Knowledge Base II. MEDICAL EXPERT SYSTEMS There are many applications of expert systems ranging from medicine, accounting, process control to human resources, financial services etc. Most applications of expert systems in medicine involve predicting and diagnosing a particular disease. But expert systems are now involved in many other roles in clinical care such as disease prevention, therapy, rehabilitation of the patient after therapy etc. Expert systems are used in medicine to train the medical students on various medical tasks. Medical expert systems are also useful in certain situations where either the case is quite complex or there is no medical experts readily available for patients. From the very beginning the main obstacle of using expert systems in medicine has been the accuracy of such systems. The field of medicine is such a complex and sophisticated one that safety is always a major issue. But still such systems The Role of Medical Expert Systems in Pakistan Fahad Shahbaz Khan, Fahad Maqbool, Saad Razzaq, Kashif Irfan, and Tehseen Zia E World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Social, Behavioral, Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering Vol:2, No:1, 2008 12 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 2(1) 2008 scholar.waset.org/1999.10/12076 In te rn at io na l S ci en ce I nd ex , H ea lth a nd M ed ic al E ng in ee ri ng V ol :2 , N o: 1, 2 00 8 w as et .o rg /P ub lic at io n/ 12 07 6 provide support in places where there is shortage of medical experts. MYCIN, PUFF, DXplain, HELP etc. are some of the famous medical expert systems. III. TOOLS FOR CONSTRUCTING MEDICAL EXPERT SYSTEMS Medical expert systems can be constructed either through AI languages or from expert systems shells. Expert system shells provide more general facilities and an easy way to enter necessary knowledge about the problem domain. ESTA, EXSYS, XpertRule, ACQUIRE, FLEX etc. are some of the popular Software packages used in the construction of medical expert systems. LISP and PROLOG are two famous AI languages used to develop medical expert systems. IV. SCOPE OF MEDICAL EXPERT SYSTEMS IN PAKISTAN Pakistan is situated in the north-western part of South Asian subcontinent. The population of Pakistan in 2002 according to Population Association of Pakistan [2] was 14.5 million. Fig. 2 shows population pyramid of Pakistan [2]. Fig. 2 Population of Pakistan (1901-2002) from census [2] Year Hospitals Dispensaries Maternity and Child Health Centres Rural Health Centre Basic Health Unit T.B. Clinic Total Beds 1947 292 722 91 13769 1955 333 984 198 19197 1960 342 1195 384 2210