Logic of dementia guidelines in a probabilistic argumentation framework

Abstract

In order to give full support for differential diagnosis of dementia in medical practice, one single clinical guideline is not sufficient. A synthesis guideline has been formalized using core features from selected clinical guidelines for the purpose of providing decision support for clinicians in clinical practice. This guideline is sufficient for typical cases in the domain, but in order to give support in atypical cases additional clinical guidelines are needed which are pervaded with more uncertainty. In order to investigate the applicability of a probabilistic formalism language for the formalisation of these guidelines, a case study was made using the qualitative probabilistic reasoning approach developed in [1]. The case study is placed in context of a foundational view of transformations between logics. The clinical decision-making motivation and utility for this transformation will be given together with some formal indications concerning this transformation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.