KON^3: A Clinical Decision Support System, in Oncology Environment, Based on Knowledge Management

The application of scientific methodology to clinical practice is typically realized through recommendations, policies and protocols represented as Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG). CPG help the clinician in his choices, improving the patient care process.The representation of Guidelines and their introduction in medical information system can lead to efficient Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS), however this poses several interesting challenges as problems of knowledge representation, inference, workflow definition, access to unstructured data, etc. In this paper we analyze approaches and methods in computer-based CPG realization and illustrate the choices made (tools, architecture and clinical domain) to realize the KON³ system to achieve a CDSS and semantic information representation, in oncology environment