Ron Rymon

AIJ Journal 1998 Journal Article

Exploiting multiple goals and intentions in decision support for the management of multiple trauma: a review of the TraumAID project

• Bonnie Webber
• Sandra Carberry
• John R. Clarke
• Abigail Gertner
• Terrence Harvey
• Ron Rymon
• Richard Washington

Managing a patient with multiple injuries is a cognitively intense task. While protocols provide invaluable support for maintaining quality care, they generally address a single condition, while multiple trauma generally involves many. The TraumAID system tries to address this by providing tools for reasoning, planning, plan recognition and text generation which essentially coordinate and integrate multiple recommendations from multiple protocols. This paper reviews work on all these tools, including their (individual) evaluations, setting the work within a uniform conceptual framework of goals, intentions and actions. Because TraumAID's use in real-time decision support depends critically on electronic forms of information sharing and recording practices in the Emergency Trauma Center, TraumAID continues to remain a laboratory exercise. Nevertheless, the general value of integrating multiple protocols for decision support justifies attention to the solution methods TraumAID provides.

AIJ Journal 1996 Journal Article

Goal-directed diagnosis—a diagnostic reasoning framework for exploratory-corrective domains

• Ron Rymon

In many diagnosis and repair domains, diagnostic reasoning cannot be abstracted from repair actions, nor from actions necessary to obtain information of diagnostic value. TraumAID 2. 0, a consultation system for multiple trauma management, implements a reasoning architecture for exploratory-corrective domains which integrates diagnostic reasoning with planning and action. Taking the view that a diagnosis is only worthwhile to the extent that it can affect repair decisions, its goal-directed diagnosis (GDD) framework views the diagnosis object as secondary to the formation of appropriate goals for a complementary planner. We start this article with a specific case of multiple trauma injury. Demonstrating some of the key features of exploratory-corrective domains, we use this case to exemplify the suitability of our approach. Before focusing on the GDD reasoner itself, we overview TraumAID 2. 0's exploratory-corrective management architecture in which it is embedded with a companion planner, and explain its iterative interaction with the physician. The paper's main body presents GDD's formalism, and knowledge representation scheme, and proposes a design methodology for GDD-based systems (the companion planner, and the implemented system are described elsewhere). Before concluding, we present a set of strategies characteristic of exploratory-corrective domains, and argue the suitability of our framework for their implementation.

AAAI Conference 1994 Conference Paper

On Kernel Rules and Prime Implicants

• Ron Rymon

We draw a simple correspondence between kernel rules and prime s’ mphznts. Kernel (minimal) rules play an important role in many induction techniques. Prime implicants were previously used to formally model many other problem domains, including Boolean circuit minimization and such classical AI problems as diagnosis, truth maintenance and circumscription. This correspondence allows computing kernel rules using any of a number of prime implicant generation algorithms. It also leads us to an algorithm in which learning is boosted by an auxiliary domain theory, e. g. , a set of rules provided by an expert, or a functional description of a device or system; we discuss this algorithm in the context of SE-tree-based generation of prime implicants.

ICML Conference 1993 Conference Paper

An SE-tree based Characterization of the Induction Problem

• Ron Rymon

AIIM Journal 1992 Journal Article

Flexible support for trauma management through goal-directed reasoning and planning

• Bonnie L. Webber
• Ron Rymon
• John R. Clarke

We describe a system, TRAUMAID, which has been designed to provide decision support throughout the initial definitive management of severely injured patients (i. e. after their initial evaluation, resuscitation, and stabilization). Over the course of initial definitive management, TraumAID recommends appropriate procedures to be carried out, based on currently available evidence and on the complexity and urgency of the situation. TraumAID's ability to deal flexibly with complex and often urgent situations comes from its ability to reason separately about the management goals that should be achieved and about the means that are situationally appropriate for achieving them. In this paper, we describe TraumAID's approach to trauma management in more detail, showing in particular how it enables TraumAID to adapt its reasoning and recommendations to the urgency with which a patient's condition must be addressed.