Handling default data under a case-based reasoning approach

The knowledge acquired through past experiences is of the most importance when humans or machines try to find solutions for new problems based on past ones, which makes the core of any Case-based Reasoning approach to problem solving. On the other hand, existent CBR systems are neither complete nor adaptable to specific domains. Indeed, the effort to adapt either the reasoning process or the knowledge representation mechanism to a new problem is too high, i.e., it is extremely difficult to adapt the input to the computational framework in order to get a solution to a particular problem. This is the drawback that is addressed in this work.This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within projects PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014 and PEst-OE/QUI/UI0619/2012

A comprehensive clinical guideline model and a reasoning mechanism for AAL systems

The progressive ageing of population combined with the need for comfort in situations of disease and disability are pushing healthcare organizations and governments to find new solutions to enable people to live longer in their preferred environment, while having access to quality healthcare services. iGenda is an Ambient Assisted Living platform that provides constant monitoring to people with this type of needs. The use of a Computer-Interpretable Guideline model for decision making is one of the features of this platform. The model used to represent Clinical Practice Guidelines gathers a set of features that make guidelines more dynamic and easily implementable. The model is defined using Ontology Web Language, profiting from the existing constructors provided by this language. It is based on a set of primitive tasks, namely Plans, Actions, Questions and Decisions. Focusing on decision support, a method for dealing with incomplete information about the clinical parameters of a health record is presented. The objective is to keep a continuous flow of information through the decision process and assuring that an outcome is always achieved. The usefulness of the integration of guideline recommendations with a reason mechanism capable of handling incomplete information is demonstrated through a case study about the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.(undefined

Development and implementation of clinical guidelines : an artificial intelligence perspective

Clinical practice guidelines in paper format are still the preferred form of delivery of medical knowledge and recommendations to healthcare professionals. Their current support and development process have well identified limitations to which the healthcare community has been continuously searching solutions. Artificial intelligence may create the conditions and provide the tools to address many, if not all, of these limitations.. This paper presents a comprehensive and up to date review of computer-interpretable guideline approaches, namely Arden Syntax, GLIF, PROforma, Asbru, GLARE and SAGE. It also provides an assessment of how well these approaches respond to the challenges posed by paper-based guidelines and addresses topics of Artificial intelligence that could provide a solution to the shortcomings of clinical guidelines. Among the topics addressed by this paper are expert systems, case-based reasoning, medical ontologies and reasoning under uncertainty, with a special focus on methodologies for assessing quality of information when managing incomplete information. Finally, an analysis is made of the fundamental requirements of a guideline model and the importance that standard terminologies and models for clinical data have in the semantic and syntactic interoperability between a guideline execution engine and the software tools used in clinical settings. It is also proposed a line of research that includes the development of an ontology for clinical practice guidelines and a decision model for a guideline-based expert system that manages non-compliance with clinical guidelines and uncertainty.This work is funded by national funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2011"

Cognitive assistance in intelligent environments

Tese de doutoramento em Engenharia BiomédicaCurrently society responds badly to some social issues. One of the problems lies on the society concept itself. The common pyramid describing the social strata does not reflect the new social reality, given that the elderly strata largely exceed the teenage strata. This fact also implies a change in terms of social and medical needs. Thus, a great number of medical services should be adapted to respond to the needs of the elderly people. In fact, any common family cannot take care of an elderly person and, in many cases they cannot also afford the required medical care. Having less time, and often, less money, a family cannot have their older relatives in their homes. In addition, the necessary support required to overcome the elderly limitations, makes it even more difficult. One solution could be that elderly people go to nursing homes or care centers. However, due to the overgrowth of the elderly community, geriatric units are not enough to take care of all those people. As a solution, technology can provide wellbeing and assistance in the elderly everyday life through personalized services at low cost. This thesis presents a cognitive assistant platform, named iGenda. A cognitive assistant provides numerous user oriented services, and it ubiquitously and transparently interacts directly with the user. Therefore, this research work has as motto: impacting the user’s life without causing an impact. It means that the platform aim is to influence the user’s life, by providing a greater quality of life, without being too complex to use. The answers to our society’s social and technological challenges are provided by the development of a platform that is intuitive to the user, cheap and able to be integrated in an Ambient Assisted Living ecosystem. Thus, this thesis presents a multi-agent, platform-independent architecture capable of intelligent scheduling. Being the cognitive assistant implemented in four case studies, namely: a sensor platform, a digital clinical guideline system, an orientation system based on augmented reality, and a fall detection application. These case studies validate the social and technological challenges, therefore the iGenda too. This is due to the complete integration with other systems, without major changes of the architecture and archetype.Atualmente, a sociedade debate-se com um problema para o qual não há uma solução simples. O problema reside na própria sociedade, mais especificamente no seu conceito. A pirâmide populacional clássica não retrata a sociedade como é atualmente, sendo que o número de idosos ultrapassa o número de jovens. Ora, este facto acarreta uma mudança nas necessidades sociais e cuidados médicos. Deste modo, um grande número de serviços médicos têm que ser reajustados para as necessidades das pessoas mais idosas. Com menos tempo e frequentemente sem dinheiro, a família não é capaz de ter um idoso na sua casa. Tendo em conta as limitações das pessoas idosas em termos de saúde, a incapacidade de assistir uma pessoa idosa é ainda maior. Uma possível solução é colocar os idosos em casas de repouso ou centros geriátricos. Contudo, devido ao crescimento da comunidade idosa, não existem unidades geriátricas suficientes para todas as pessoas. A tecnologia pode providenciar assistência e bem-estar na vida cotidiana de uma pessoa idosa, através de serviços personalizados de baixo custo, servindo como uma possível resposta aos problemas apresentados. Nesta tese apresenta-se o iGenda, como uma plataforma de desenvolvimento de assistentes cognitivos. Um assistente cognitivo que assegura vários serviços orientados ao utilizador, interagindo com o utilizador de forma ubíqua e transparente. Este trabalho de investigação tem como lema: mudar a vida do utilizador sem o mudar. Isto significa que a plataforma tem como objetivo mudar a vida do utilizador, ao proporcionar uma maior qualidade de vida, sem que o utilizador tenha dificuldade a adaptar-se ou a utilizar a plataforma. As respostas para os desafios sociais e tecnológicos apresentados pela nossa sociedade são fornecidas pelo desenvolvimento de uma plataforma intuitiva, barata e capaz de ser integrada num ecossistema de Ambient Assisted Living. Deste modo, o processo de agendamento inteligente é assegurado por uma arquitetura multiagente e independente de plataformas, apresentada nesta tese. Sendo que o assistente cognitivo é implementado em quatro casos de estudo: uma plataforma de sensores, um sistema digital de guias clínicos, um sistema de orientação baseado em realidade aumentada e um sistema de deteção de quedas. Estes casos de estudo validam os desafios sociais e tecnológicos, portanto validando também o iGenda. Isto verifica-se com a integração completa com outros sistemas, sem muitas alterações à arquitetura ou ao arquétip

Evolutionary intelligence in asphalt pavement modeling and quality-of-information

he analysis and development of a novel approach to asphalt pavement modeling, able to attend the need to predict failure according to technical and non- technical criteria in a highway, is a hard task, namely in terms of the huge amount of possible scenarios. Indeed, the current state-of-the-art for service-life prediction is at empiric and empiric-mechanistic levels, and do not provide any suitable answer even for one single failure criteria. Consequently, it is imperative to achieve qualified models and qualitative reasoning methods, in particular due to the need to have first-class environments at our disposal where defective information is at hand. In order to fulfill this goal, this paper presents a dynamic and formal model oriented to fulfill the task of making predictions for multi-failure criteria, in particular in scenarios with incomplete information; it is an intelligence tool that advances according to the Quality-of- Information of the extensions of the predicates that model the universe of discourse. On the other hand, it is also considered the Degree-of-Confidence factor, a parameter that measures one`s confidence on the list of characteristics presented by an asphalt pavement, set in terms of the attributes or variables that make the argument of the predicates referred to above.The authors would like to thank the Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT), Portugal, for financial support received under the contract UTAustin/CA/0012/2008