Case-Based Reasoning for Expertise Relocation
in Support of Rural Health Workers
in Developing Countries

Elisha T. O. Opiyo

Faculty of Information Sciences, Moi University, P.O. Box 3900,
Eldoret, Kenya.

Current address: Department of Computing Mathematics, University of
Wales College of Cardiff, P.O. Box 916, Cardiff CF2 4YN, United
Kingdom.
e-mail: elisha.t.o.opiyo@cm.cf.ac.uk

Abstract

Developing countries still suffer lack of adequate skilled medical health personnel and poor
infrastructure. Expert systems have been identified as potential tools in addressing some
aspects of these problems. In particular, most of the earlier researchers investigated the
possibility of incorporating diagnostic-support applications in the medical work place. They
did so by using expert systems that were built around representations such as production rules,
frames, scripts and semantic networks. In this paper, a report on a different approach is given.
A MEdical Reference SYstem(MERSY) is proposed. The basis of the design of MERSY is the
case-based reasoning paradigm with some underlying domain model. This system therefore
gets around the limitations of traditional expert systems that are related to knowledge
representation and acquisition. The work also a emphasizes a high level of physical
portability, hence the relocation of expertise. It is an on-going research.
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