Plan recognition and evaluation for on-line critiquing

The Traum-AID system is a tool for assisting physicians during the management of patients with severe injuries. Originally, Traum-AID was conceived as a rule-based expert system combined with a planner. After this architecture had been implemented, we began to face the issue of how Traum-AID could communicate its plans to physicians in order to influence their behavior and have a positive effect on patient outcome. This paper describes Trauma-TIQ-the critiquing interface for Traum-AID-which examines the actions the physician intends to carry out and produces a critique in response to those intentions. Trauma-TIQ's two main components are a plan recognizer that uses the context of the case to disambiguate plans, and a plan evaluator that identifies errors and calculates their significance in order to determine an appropriate response. Unlike previously developed reminder systems, Trauma-TIQ evaluates the physician's proposed plan and attempts to intervene before problems occur. And unlike previous critiquing systems, it is able to provide ongoing decision support during the planning and delivery of care. In the context of time-critical patient management it is, therefore, a more appropriate means of interaction.