Task-based modelling of the triage domain knowledge

Abstract

Triage is a decision-making process that classifies incoming patients for presentational urgency in Emergency Departments (EDs). There are issues with triage reliability in EDs, which we can be resolved through uniform application of a robust triage scale. However, the complex robust triaging knowledge is not easy to understand or recalled for timely decision-making. Therefore, we suggest the development of a knowledge-based triage decision support system to help triage officers to make correct and consistent triage decisions. Consequently, we pursued knowledge engineering to construct the models of the knowledge in order to make explicit the conceptualisation of the assumptions and constraints in triage decision-making. We regard task as a rationale basis for modelling the purposive domain knowledge. Consequently, the paper discusses the modelling of the domain knowledge to support the triage decision-making task. The triage decision-making task model is presented in a complementary paper. Together, the knowledge models can be viewed as meta models that provide the conceptual guiding principles for the consequent design of the triage decision support system. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.