Appeal No. 2002-2066
Application No. 09/288,504
plans or test plans for a patient. Expectations of the actions
to be selected are calculated in accordance with occurrence
probabilities for corresponding events which may occur as a
result of the selected actions and in accordance with utility
values which reflect the subjective worth the patient attributes
to the corresponding events that may occur.
Claim 9 is illustrative of the invention and reads as
follows:
9. A support system for use in making decisions on medical
treatment or test plans, comprising:
a decision tree data storing section storing a decision
tree, said decision tree having branches that represent available
actions to be selected in deciding on a medical treatment or test
plan for a patient and events that may occur upon selecting an
available action; and
a calculating section calculating expectation values for
each available action of said decision tree based on occurrence
probabilities for events that may occur upon selecting the
corresponding available action and utility values associated with
the events that may occur, such utility values reflecting the
subjective worth the patient attributes to the corresponding
events that may occur,
wherein the occurrence probabilities for events that may
occur upon selecting available action are based on patient
attribute information.
The Examiner relies on the following prior art:
Dormond et al. (Dormond) 4,839,822 Jun. 13, 1989
-2–2
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