Advances in Computational Intelligence in Healthcare - Computational Intelligence in Healthcare: Advanced Methodologies - page 1

Chapter 1
Advances in Computational Intelligence in Healthcare
Isabelle Bichindaritz 1 and Lakhmi C. Jain 2
1 University of Washington, Tacoma
WA 98402
USA
2 University of South Australia
Adelaide
South Australia SA 5095
Australia
Abstract. This chapter presents an introduction to the computational intelli-
gence in medicine as well as a sample of recent advances in the field. A very
brief introduction of chapters included in the topic is included.
1 Introduction
The tremendous advances in computational intelligence in recent years can be attrib-
uted to a variety of reasons such as the cheap and easy availability of computing
power and so on. First were developed decision-support systems such as INTERNIST
in 1970 and MYCIN in 1976. INTERNIST is classified as a rule-based expert system
focused on the diagnosis of complex diseases. It has been commercialized later on as
Quick Medical Reference (QMR) to support internists' diagnosis. MYCIN was also a
rule-based expert system, but applied to the diagnosis and treatment of blood infec-
tions. Created by Ted Shortliffe, this knowledge-based system mapped symptoms to
diseases, led to clinical evaluation of its effectiveness, and to the development of an
expert system shell EMYCIN. The evolution of artificial intelligence engendered new
generations of artificial intelligence systems in medicine, expanding the range of AI
methodologies in biomedical informatics, such as implementation of clinical practice
guidelines in expert systems, data mining to establish trends and associations between
symptoms, genetic information, and diagnoses, and medical image interpretation, to
name a few. Researchers stressed the value of early systems for testing artificial intel-
ligence methodologies.
These early systems attempted to model how clinicians reasoned. One major step
was to include intelligent systems in clinical practice. Computational intelligence
systems in use today are numerous. One of the first one was NéoGanesh, developed to
regulate the automatic ventilation system in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), in use
since 1995. Another example is Dxplain, a general expert system for the medical
field, associating 4,500 clinical findings, including laboratory test results, with more
than 2,000 diseases. Some of these systems are available for routine purchase in
medical supplies catalogues. Clinical outcomes have been demonstrated, through