Adaptive medical information delivery combining user, task and situation models

Medical information delivery for users with different levels of expertise will be required for the manned mission to Mars due to limited potential for communication with Earth. The Mars Medical Assistant (MMA) uses a combination of user, situation, and task models to create virtual hypertext structures by piecing together medical “information components.” Information components are chosen based on the semantic content and the cognitive characteristics of the component's media type. The medical assistant currently supports three tasks: 1) describing medical procedures, 2) aiding diagnosis, and 3) providing information on health concerns. Conflicting suggestions from the three models need to be resolved. Tradeoffs in the model representations and conflict resolution strategies are being explored in the context of MMA.