NEOMYCIN: Reconfiguring a Rule-Based Expert System for Application to Teaching

Abstract

NEOMYCIN it a medical consultation system in which MYCIN's knowledge base is reorganized and extended for use in GUD0N, a teaching program. The new system constitutes a psychological model for doing diagnosis, designed to provide a basis for Interpreting student behavior and teaching diagnostic strategy. The model separates out Kinds of Knowledge that are procedurally embedded in MYCIN'S rules and so inaccessible to the teaching program. The Key idea is to represent explicitly and separately: a domain-independent diagnostic strategy in the form of meta-rules, Knowledge about the structure of the problem space, causal and data/hypothesis rules, and world facts. At a psychological model, NEOMYCIN captures the forward-directed, compiled association mode of reasoning that characterizes expert behavior. Collection and interpretation of data are focused by the differential or working memory of hypotheses Moreover, the Knowledge base is broadened so that GUIDON can teach a student when to consider a specific infectious disease and what competing hypotheses to consider, essentially the Knowledge a human would need in order to use the MYCIN consultation system properly.