GAMEES II: an environment for building probabilistic expert systems based on arrays of Bayesian belief networks

The authors describe GAMEES II (Graphical Modeling Environment for Expert Systems II), a computer system built to manage arrays of Bayesian belief networks (BBNs). With regard to biomedical applications, the system makes it possible to represent probabilistic knowledge both for the individual patient and for population, enlarging the class of problems actually represented through BBNs. In addition, mathematical models can be represented through the BBN formalism. These characteristics were exploited to perform model-based patient monitoring and population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic studies. BBNs are built within GAMEES II through a graphical interface which is provided with some statistical knowledge, in order to facilitate the construction of sound statistical models. Probabilistic inference is performed by stochastic simulation algorithms that do not give rise to computational problems when dealing with complex networks