R.A. Morelli*, J.D. Bronzino* and J.W.Goethe
*Department of Engineering and Computer Science, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106, USA
The Institute of Living, Hartford, CT 06106, USA
SYNOPSIS
When a staff physician says to an intern he is supervising "I think you should try medication X", this utterance may differ in meaning from the same string of words spoken to another staff physician. In the first case, the statement may have the force of an order ("Do this!"), while in the latter it is merely a suggestion. In either case, the utterance sets up important expectations which constrain the future actions of the parties involved. This paper presents an analytic framework, based on speech act theory, for representing such "conversations" so that they may be used in the design of a computer system. Our design perspective views the information system -- in this case an expert system that monitors drug treatment -- as one of many "agents" within a broad communicative network. Speech act theory is used to model the communi cative actions within a psychiatric hospital unit and portions of the resulting model are used to support various design decisions. We have found this approach to be useful for addressing a variety of design issues ranging from the specification of input/output screens to the clarification of the system's potential impact on the physician's decision making role and responsibility.
Key Words
Artificial Intelligence, Computer, Clinical Expert System, Speech Act Theory