Why Hybrid Case-Based Reasoning Will Change the Future of Health Science and Healthcare

Peter Funk
2015 International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning  
The rapid development of the medical field makes it impossible even for experts in the field to keep up with new treatments and experience. Already in 2010 all medical knowledge doubled in 3,5 years, to keep up to date with all development even in a narrow field is today far beyond human capacity. The need for decision support is increasingly important to ensure optimal treatment of patients, especially if patients are not "standard patients" matching a gold standard treatment. By ensuring
more » ... dentiality and collecting structured cases on a large scale will enable clinical decision support far beyond what is possible today and will be a major leap in healthcare. Already in 2010 all medical knowledge doubled every 3.5 years and is expected to double every 7 months in 2020 [1] . 20 years ago physicians met and discussed medical cases over a cup of coffee, an efficient way of sharing experience and disseminating knowledge. Times are changing; physicians say they don't have time for this any more. In a modern and efficient healthcare organisation there is no longer room for experience sharing and patients are treated according to guidelines. Many physicians I have discussed with admit that the consequence is that as much as 30% of patients don't receive optimal treatment. The amount of medical knowledge is already huge, so it often takes years for new results to spread and even specialists are not able to keep up to date with all developments in their own area. Also some physicians mentioned the use of "golden standard" having the consequence that not all patients get an optimal treatment on an individual level [2] . To illustrate this situation Fig. 1 shows what some physicians see as a problem. The need for more individualized treatment is recognized today, but to make this come true is not easy for a number of reasons, one suggested reason given by a physician is the lack of support in hospitals for individualized treatments "No one questions your actions if you follow a gold standard and something goes wrong, but if you divert from it and something goes wrong, you are in a difficult situation". Sharing experience on patients
dblp:conf/iccbr/Funk15 fatcat:6pizaipqf5d7rheivnlk2gg4qq