Addressing the shortage of Medical Doctors in Zambia: Medical Diagnosis Expert System as a solution

Abstract

This paper presents how expert systems can help in minimizing the consequences of the shortage of medical personnel in Zambia. It also examines why it is important to develop medical diagnosis expert systems, which are to be developed for the diagnosis of diseases that are specific to Africa, as opposed to using systems that are meant for use in the Western World. The paper further discuses the process of designing, developing and testing a medical expert system, capable of diagnosing tropical diseases, which are very prevalent in Africa. The develop system should consist of three parts: A user interface that allows a user to interact with the system, a knowledge base which is basically a collection of facts and rules and an inference engine, which exams the knowledge base for information that matches the user's query. The knowledge base is created from information provided by a number of experienced medical doctors. The system was developed in PROLOG language.