Developing Knowledge Based System For Acute Diarrheal Diseases Diagnosis And Treatment

Abstract

Acute Diarrhoeal disease is widely recognized as a major cause of child morbidity and mortality in many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In Ethiopia, Acute Diarrhoeal disease is one of the most frequent causes of childhood and a major contributor to child mortality. The frequency and severity of diarrhea is aggravated by lack of access to sufficient clean water and sanitary disposal of human waste, inadequate feeding and washing practice; poor housing conditions and lack of access to adequate and affordable health care. The burden is disproportionately high among children in low and middle-income countries. Young children are especially vulnerable to diarrheal disease and a high proportion of the deaths occur in the first 2 years of life. To this end, knowledge is acquired using both structured and unstructured interviews from domain expert and relevant document analysis method was used to capture domain knowledge. Then, the acquired knowledge is modeled using decision tree that represents concepts and procedures involved in diagnosis and treatment of Diarrhoeal disease. Production rules are used to represent the domain knowledge and knowledge-based system is developed using SWI Prolog editor tool. It uses backward chaining which begins with possible solutions or goals and tries to gather information that verifies the solution. The system prototype was evaluated using visual interactive and close ended questionnaires method; it was shown that the domain experts are satisfied with the system prototype performance. And the proposed knowledge based system gain about 75% of user acceptance.