INTERLOCUTOR: conferring with an expert diagnostic consultant in geriatric psychiatry

The authors discuss INTERLOCUTOR, a diagnostic expert system designed to emulate the typical consultative discourse between clinicians in geriatric psychiatry. Patient data are entered from menus. Domain knowledge is represented as a set of specialists, each containing a firing condition and an implicit action to take when fired. The firing condition is a test for a set of values on the blackboard recording the patient data. Some specialists add information to the blackboard, some initiate the consultative dialogue with the user, and some specify fully or partially supported diagnostic opinions. The data on the blackboard can be stored in their entirety for entry of additional data at a later time or for patient follow up. An English language summary of the diagnostic findings and particulars of the case can be generated from the blackboard values by a text generator