Readings in Medical Artificial Intelligence: The First Decade

We are beginning to take for granted that computers can do time-consuming but clearly defined tasks. This book describes attempts to develop systems that exhibit characteristics of intelligent human behavior, such as understanding natural language, reasoning, learning, and solving problems.Readings in Medical Artificial Intelligenceis a collection of articles first put together as background reading for a workshop, assembled by two active researchers in the field. Most of the systems described concern computer models for narrowly defined areas of medical expertise. There are chapters about systems that select antibiotics for patients with meningitis or bacteremia, diagnose the causes of renal failure, manage ventilators for patients in the intensive care unit, prescribe cancer chemotherapy regimens, and interpret pulmonary function tests. Some of these systems can perform their tasks with results comparable to those of subspecialists. The most ambitious project attempts to create a system that covers all of internal medicine