Encoding clinical recommendations into fuzzy DSSs: An application to COPD guidelines

Clinical Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been applied to medical scenarios by computerizing a set of clinical guidelines of interest, with the final aim of simulating the process followed by the physicians. In this context, fuzzy logic has been profitably used for modeling clinical guidelines affected by uncertainty and improving the interpretability of clinical DSSs through its expressivity close to natural language. However, the task of computerizing clinical guidelines in terms of fuzzy if-then rules can be complex and, often, requires technical capabilities not owned by physicians. In order to face this issue, this paper introduces a fuzzy knowledge editing framework expressly devised and designed to simplify the procedures necessary to codify clinical guidelines in terms of fuzzy if-then rules and linguistic variables. This framework is described with respect to a specific real case regarding the formalization of clinical recommendations extracted from the GOLD guidelines, which contain the best evidence for diagnosing and managing the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.