Case Based Reasoning System for Substance Abuse Treatment

This Phase project focuses on the development of decision-support software which will enhance the uexisting psychometric instruments for clinicians engaged in making substance abuse assessments and tsoftware, when integrated with an existing battery of instruments called the Clinical Assessment andSystem (CARES), will improve objectivity, depth, and accessibility of information available to suppotreatment plans. Case-based reasoning constitutes the core technology of this software, and enablesyield recommendations for the case at hand by drawing from experiences with similar cases in the paswill center on designing, developing and testing a prototype case-based reasoning engine using a panabuse clinicians and an existing database of over 50,000 patients treated for substance abuse. Eachclinicians render some kind of substance abuse services to several million employees and patients. Ipressures and demands of rising volume, lower budgets, and stiffer public policy on health care qualclinicians need tools which, comfortably and economically, deliver objective and comprehensive inforrapid, consistent and defensible decision-making.