Use of intelligent agents in the diagnosis of cardiac disorders

Diagnosis of cardiac disorders requires the combination of many different types of data, including family and patient histories, laboratory results, physical findings, genetic information, electrocardiogram analysis, and imaging results. Computer-assisted decision support systems must be able to combine these data types into a seamless system. Intelligent agents, an approach that has been used chiefly in business applications, provides a structure that can combine not only data types but also a variety of reasoning methodologies in the same decision support system. The user is included as an agent in the system and can interact directly with any of the components. The authors have used this approach to develop a decision aid for dementia evaluation. The adaptation of this methodology to the diagnosis of cardiac disorders is presented here.