Knowledge and Knowledge Acquisition for the Development of Expert Systems for Nursing

Abstract

Residing within the field of Artificial Intelligence, knowledge acquisition is the process of locating, collecting, and refining knowledge for the development of knowledge based systems (Harmon & King, 1985). It is the transfer of expertise from a person to the system. Knowledge is an integrated collection of facts and relationships basic to competent performance (Harmon & King, 1985). Townsend and Feucht (1986) extend the definition to include heuristics that can be used to solve problems. A common dictionary definition is that knowledge is an acquaintance with facts, truth, or principles as from study or investigation.