It also helps to foster a more global sense of ownership among the system users. Statements about these tasks make assumptions about models of time and of data abstractions, and about degree of uncertainty, points of view, and exception handling. Because of this variability in guideline tasks and assumptions, monolithic models cannot be custom tailored to the requirements of different classes of guidelines. Instead, we have created a core model that defines a set of basic concepts and relations and that uses different submodels to account for differing knowledge requirements. We describe the conceptualization of the guideline domain that underlies our approach, discuss components of the core model and possible submodels, and give three examples of specialized guideline models to illustrate how task-specific guideline models can be specialized and assembled to better match modeling requirements of different guidelines.
Computer systems use explanations to justify their conclusions.
We are developing WOZ, an explanation framework that justifies the conclusions of a clinical decision-support system. WOZ's central component is the explanation strategy that decides what information justifies a claim. The strategy uses Toulmin's argument structure to define pieces of information and to orchestrate their presentation. WOZ uses explicit models that abstract the core aspects of the framework such as the explanation strategy. WOZ exploits the wealth of naturally occurring arguments, and thus can generate convincing medical explanations.