| abstract |
The present invention involves a system and method of providing decision support for assisting medical treatment decision-making. A patient agent software module processes information about a particular patient. A doctor agent software module processes information about a health status of a particular patient, beliefs relating to patient treatments, and the actual effects of treatment decisions. By filtering information over time from the patient agent into the doctor agent, a plurality of decision-outcome nodes are created and formed into a patient-specific outcome tree with the plurality of decision-outcome nodes. An optimal treatment is determined by evaluating the plurality of decision-outcome nodes with a cost per unit change function to output the optimal treatment. When additional information is available from at least one of the patient agent and the doctor agent, the filtering, creating, and determining steps are repeated thus allowing for the system to “reason over time”, continuously updating and learning as new information is received. |