Declarative Programming and Clinical Medicine On the Use of Gisela in the MedView Project

In 1995, the MedView project, based on a co-operation between computing science and clinical medicine was initiated. The overall aim of the project is to develop models, methods, and tools to support clinicians in their diagnostic work. Today, the system is in daily use at several clinics and the knowledge base created contains more than 2000 examination records from the involved clinics. Knowledge representation and reasoning within MedView uses a declarative model based on a theory of definitions. In order to be able to model knowledge declaratively and integrate reasoning into applications with GUIs a framework for definitional programming has been developed. We give an overview of the project and of how declarative programming techniques are integrated with industrial strength object-oriented programming tools to facilitate the development of real-world applications.