Knowledge Elicitation Using the Delphi Technique in Developing Diagnosis Systems

Abstract

Knowledge elicitation is important in designing knowledge-based diagnosis systems. Various approaches such as interviews and questionnaires have been used to elicit knowledge from experts. These approaches elicit knowledge from individual experts separately. Medical practitioners have diverse knowledge and experience in the diagnosis and management of a particular disease. A major challenge is in producing a harmonised diagnosis from different practitioners, which will inform the level of agreement among them on the treatment of Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). Therefore, it is important to elicit and integrate knowledge from different medical practitioners in developing an effective diagnosis system. Thus, the Delphi technique was employed in this study to elicit domain knowledge in developing SCD diagnosis systems in African Traditional Medicine (ATM) since there is no gold standard for achieving diagnosis in ATM. A kappa value of 0.487 was achieved. This implies that the Herb sellers averagely agree in the ranking of the SCD symptoms. Therefore, to build an effective SCD diagnosis system, further work should be done by conducting more Delphi rounds to ensure that a high level of consensus is reached. The Delphi technique used in this study helped in the area of requirement elicitation of SCD diagnosis in ATM which could be used in the development of an SCD diagnosis system.

Keywords

• african traditional medicine
• clinical diagnosis systems
• delphi technique
• knowledge elicitation
• sickle cell disease