Computers in biology and medicine
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The Arden Syntax for Medical Logic Modules is a language for encoding medical knowledge bases that consist of independent modules. The Arden Syntax has been used to generate clinical alerts, diagnostic interpretations, management messages, and screening for research studies and quality assurance. ⋯ Most MLMs are triggered by clinical events, evaluate medical criteria, and, if appropriate, perform an action such as sending a message to a health care provider. This paper provides a detailed tutorial on how to write MLMs.
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In implementing a clinical event monitor (CEM), a decision-support system, we worked with an existing repository of clinical data (Keystone), fed from ancillary systems using HL7. The rules are written in the Arden Syntax, an ASTM standard for expressing medical knowledge as medical logic modules (MLMs). ⋯ Overall, less than a quarter of the development effort has gone into the Arden compiler and interpreter; the rest has focused on accessing the data and integrating with other systems. We feel that the Arden Syntax has proved its worth in writing rules; effort should now be focused on medical vocabularies and data models.