Implementation and study of changes in Lepidus System for supporting clinical decision

Abstract

The objective of this project is to implement and test some modifications in the Lepidus medical decision support system, which has been under development at the laboratory of the supervisor with FAPESP support (processes 96/03807-5, 01/08681-0, 03/01839-2 and 03/06369-4). The candidate has already begun his works in the above mentioned project with his participation at a work group formed by undergraduate students, a post-doc and the supervisor of this project, aiming at the development of a new computational version of Lepidus, optimized in relation to the original one. The objective now is to use the facilities introduced by the new version to make modifications in the algorithm and test the performance of these new versions in comparison with the original one. The main performance parameter to be used is the percentage of correct answers, appropriately defined, in relation to the total number of testing cases. The testing cases will be the clinical cases originally used to evaluate the first version of the Lepidus system, obtained mostly from the archives of the Clinics Hospital of the Ribeirao Preto Medical School of the University of Sao Paulo. These modifications may lead to a new version of the Lepidus system with a superior performance, thus with potential to be registered as intelectual property. Independently of this the candidate – an undergraduate student in Biomedical Informatics –will, in his scientific initiation, study the area of medical decision support systems and gain a working experience of doing research at a university laboratory, which certainly will be of benefit for him in his professional future.