AIDS2: a decision-support tool for decreasing physicians' uncertainty regarding patient eligibility for HIV treatment protocols.

We have developed a decision-support tool, the AIDS Intervention Decision-Support System (AIDS2), to assist in the task of matching patients to therapy-related research protocols. The purposes of AIDS2 are to determine the initial eligibility status of HIV-infected patients for therapy-related research protocols, and to suggest additional data-gathering activities that will decrease uncertainty related to the eligibility status. AIDS2 operates in either a patient-driven or protocol-driven mode. We represent the system knowledge in three combined levels: a classification level, where deterministic knowledge is represented; a belief-network level, where probabilistic knowledge is represented; and a control level, where knowledge about the system's operation is stored. To determine whether the design specifications were met, we presented a series of 10 clinical cases based on actual patients to the system. AIDS2 provided meaningful advice in all cases.