Pathology Question:

Rule-based systems underlie most clinical event monitors (programs that detect important clinical events and notify appropriate medical personnel). Often these systems work in conjunction with data from the clinical pathology LIS. What aspects of clinical pathology make a rule-based system a reasonable approach?

Answer:

Clinical laboratory databases consist of many discrete test results that have known reference ranges and critical values. Well-established patterns of these results exist that is known as related to important clinical conditions. Writing rules that detect and alert to these patterns is straightforward.

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