"Electronic Pediatrician", a non-machine learning prototype artificial intelligence software for pediatric computer-assisted pathophysiologic diagnosis - general presentation.

BACKGROUND

Knowledge-based systems (KBS) are software applications based on a knowledge database and an inference engine. Various experimental KBS for computer-assisted medical diagnosis and treatment were started to be used since 70s (VisualDx, GIDEON, DXPlain, CADUCEUS, Internist-I, Mycin ).

AIM

To present in detail the "Electronic Pediatrician (EPed)", a medical non-machine learning artificial intelligence (nml-AI) KBS in its prototype version created by the corresponding author (with database written in Romanian) that offers a physiopathology-based differential and positive diagnosis and treatment of ill children.

METHODS

EPed specifically focuses on the physiopathological reasoning of pediatric clinical cases. EPed has currently reached its prototype version 2.0, being able to diagnose 302 physiopathological macro-links (briefly named "clusters") and 269 pediatric diseases: Some examples of diagnosis and a previous testing of EPed on a group of 34 patients are also presented in this paper.

RESULTS

The prototype EPed can currently diagnose 269 pediatric infectious and non-infectious diseases (based on 302 clusters), including the most frequent respiratory/digestive/renal/central nervous system infections, but also many other non-infectious pediatric diseases like autoimmune, oncological, genetical diseases and even intoxications, plus some important surgical pathologies.

CONCLUSION

EPed is the first and only physiopathology-based nml-AI KBS focused on general pediatrics and is the first and only pediatric Romanian KBS addressed to medical professionals. Furthermore, EPed is the first and only nml-AI KBS that offers not only both a physiopathology-based differential and positive disease diagnosis, but also identifies possible physiopathological "clusters" that may explain the signs and symptoms of any child-patient and may help treating that patient physiopathologically (until a final diagnosis is found), thus encouraging and developing the physiopathological reasoning of any clinician.