John Fox | University of Oxford (original) (raw)
Papers by John Fox
Argumentation …, Jan 1, 2003
This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific c... more This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific context (eg a set of situational facts and past, current and possible future events) in order to permit an agent to decide what to believe or what to do. Argumentation can be based on simple ...
Studies in health technology and informatics, 2004
Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most curr... more Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most current guideline representation systems or are encoded procedurally (e.g. as clinical algorithms, condition-action rules). There would be a number of major benefits if guideline enactment systems could reason explicitly about clinical objectives (e.g. whether a goal has been successfully achieved or not, whether it is consistent with prevailing conditions, or how the system should adapt to circumstances where a recommended action has failed to achieve the intended result). Our own guideline specification language, PROforma, includes a simple goal construct to address this need, but the interpretation is unsatisfactory in current enactment engines, and goals have yet to be included in the language semantics. This paper discusses some of the challenges involved in developing an explicit, declarative formalism for goals. As part of this, we report on a study we have undertaken which has identi...
Studies in health technology and informatics, 2004
Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most curr... more Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most current guideline representation systems or are encoded procedurally (e.g. as clinical algorithms, condition-action rules). There would be a number of major benefits if guideline enactment systems could reason explicitly about clinical objectives (e.g. whether a goal has been successfully achieved or not, whether it is consistent with prevailing conditions, or how the system should adapt to circumstances where a recommended action has failed to achieve the intended result). Our own guideline specification language, PROforma, includes a simple goal construct to address this need, but the interpretation is unsatisfactory in current enactment engines, and goals have yet to be included in the language semantics. This paper discusses some of the challenges involved in developing an explicit, declarative formalism for goals. As part of this, we report on a study we have undertaken which has identi...
Studies in health technology and informatics
This paper addresses two important problems in medical image interpretation:(1) integration of nu... more This paper addresses two important problems in medical image interpretation:(1) integration of numeric and symbolic information, (2) access to external sources of medical knowledge. We have developed a prototype in which image processing algorithms are combined with symbolic representations for reasoning, decision making and task management in an integrated, platform-independent system for the differential diagnosis of abnormalities in mammograms. The prototype is based on PROforma, a generic technology for building decision support systems based on clinical guidelines. The PROforma language defines a set of tasks, one of which, the enquiry, is used as means of interaction with the outside world. However, the current enquiry model has proved to be too limited for our purposes. In this paper we outline a more general model, which can be used as an interface between symbolic functions and image or other signal data.
Applications of Software Agent Technology in the Health Care Domain, 2003
Argumentation Library, 2003
This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific c... more This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific context (eg a set of situational facts and past, current and possible future events) in order to permit an agent to decide what to believe or what to do. Argumentation can be based on simple ...
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2003
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2003
There are many challenges to designers wishing to build computer systems to help doctors in their... more There are many challenges to designers wishing to build computer systems to help doctors in their everyday decision making. Systems must be flexible, easy to maintain, robust, sound and safe. It is not easy to meet all these requirements simultaneously. General medical practice exemplifies these problems in quite an extreme form; we discuss how the use of logic programming techniques
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 1998
Artificial Intelligence, 1996
From an inconsistent database non-trivial arguments may be constructed both for a proposition, an... more From an inconsistent database non-trivial arguments may be constructed both for a proposition, and for the contrary of that proposition. Therefore, inconsistency in a logical database causes uncertainty about which conclusions to accept. This kind of uncertainty is called logical uncertainty. We define a concept of "acceptability", which induces a means for differentiating arguments. The more acceptable an argument, the more confident we are in it. A specific interest is to use the acceptability classes to assign linguistic qualifiers to propositions, such that the qualifier assigned to a propositions reflects its logical uncertainty. A more general interest is to understand how classes of acceptability can be defined for arguments constructed from an inconsistent database, and how this notion of acceptability can be devised to reflect different criteria. Whilst concentrating on the aspects of assigning linguistic qualifiers to propositions, we also indicate the more general significance of the notion of acceptability.
The ability to reason under uncertainty and with incomplete information is a fundamental requirem... more The ability to reason under uncertainty and with incomplete information is a fundamental requirement of decision support technology. In this paper we argue that the concentration on theoretical techniques for the evaluation and selection of decision options has distracted attention from many of the wider issues in decision making. Although numerical methods of reasoning under uncertainty have strong theoretical foundations, they are representationally weak and only deal with a small part of the decision process. Knowledge based systems, on the other hand, offer greater flexibility but have not been accompanied by a clear decision theory. We describe here work which is under way towards providing a theoretical framework for symbolic decision procedures. A central proposal is an extended form of inference which we call argumentation; reasoning for and against decision options from generalised domain theories. The approach has been successfully used in several decision support applications, but it is argued that a comprehensive decision theory must cover autonomous decision making, where the agent can formulate questions as well as take decisions. A major theoretical challenge for this theory is to capture the idea of reflection to permit decision agents to reason about their goals, what they believe and why, and what they need to know or do in order to achieve their goals.
Argumentation …, Jan 1, 2003
This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific c... more This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific context (eg a set of situational facts and past, current and possible future events) in order to permit an agent to decide what to believe or what to do. Argumentation can be based on simple ...
Studies in health technology and informatics, 2004
Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most curr... more Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most current guideline representation systems or are encoded procedurally (e.g. as clinical algorithms, condition-action rules). There would be a number of major benefits if guideline enactment systems could reason explicitly about clinical objectives (e.g. whether a goal has been successfully achieved or not, whether it is consistent with prevailing conditions, or how the system should adapt to circumstances where a recommended action has failed to achieve the intended result). Our own guideline specification language, PROforma, includes a simple goal construct to address this need, but the interpretation is unsatisfactory in current enactment engines, and goals have yet to be included in the language semantics. This paper discusses some of the challenges involved in developing an explicit, declarative formalism for goals. As part of this, we report on a study we have undertaken which has identi...
Studies in health technology and informatics, 2004
Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most curr... more Knowledge of clinical goals and the means to achieve them are either not represented in most current guideline representation systems or are encoded procedurally (e.g. as clinical algorithms, condition-action rules). There would be a number of major benefits if guideline enactment systems could reason explicitly about clinical objectives (e.g. whether a goal has been successfully achieved or not, whether it is consistent with prevailing conditions, or how the system should adapt to circumstances where a recommended action has failed to achieve the intended result). Our own guideline specification language, PROforma, includes a simple goal construct to address this need, but the interpretation is unsatisfactory in current enactment engines, and goals have yet to be included in the language semantics. This paper discusses some of the challenges involved in developing an explicit, declarative formalism for goals. As part of this, we report on a study we have undertaken which has identi...
Studies in health technology and informatics
This paper addresses two important problems in medical image interpretation:(1) integration of nu... more This paper addresses two important problems in medical image interpretation:(1) integration of numeric and symbolic information, (2) access to external sources of medical knowledge. We have developed a prototype in which image processing algorithms are combined with symbolic representations for reasoning, decision making and task management in an integrated, platform-independent system for the differential diagnosis of abnormalities in mammograms. The prototype is based on PROforma, a generic technology for building decision support systems based on clinical guidelines. The PROforma language defines a set of tasks, one of which, the enquiry, is used as means of interaction with the outside world. However, the current enquiry model has proved to be too limited for our purposes. In this paper we outline a more general model, which can be used as an interface between symbolic functions and image or other signal data.
Applications of Software Agent Technology in the Health Care Domain, 2003
Argumentation Library, 2003
This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific c... more This is the process of applying a body of knowledge (eg a set of rules and facts) to a specific context (eg a set of situational facts and past, current and possible future events) in order to permit an agent to decide what to believe or what to do. Argumentation can be based on simple ...
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2003
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2003
There are many challenges to designers wishing to build computer systems to help doctors in their... more There are many challenges to designers wishing to build computer systems to help doctors in their everyday decision making. Systems must be flexible, easy to maintain, robust, sound and safe. It is not easy to meet all these requirements simultaneously. General medical practice exemplifies these problems in quite an extreme form; we discuss how the use of logic programming techniques
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 1998
Artificial Intelligence, 1996
From an inconsistent database non-trivial arguments may be constructed both for a proposition, an... more From an inconsistent database non-trivial arguments may be constructed both for a proposition, and for the contrary of that proposition. Therefore, inconsistency in a logical database causes uncertainty about which conclusions to accept. This kind of uncertainty is called logical uncertainty. We define a concept of "acceptability", which induces a means for differentiating arguments. The more acceptable an argument, the more confident we are in it. A specific interest is to use the acceptability classes to assign linguistic qualifiers to propositions, such that the qualifier assigned to a propositions reflects its logical uncertainty. A more general interest is to understand how classes of acceptability can be defined for arguments constructed from an inconsistent database, and how this notion of acceptability can be devised to reflect different criteria. Whilst concentrating on the aspects of assigning linguistic qualifiers to propositions, we also indicate the more general significance of the notion of acceptability.
The ability to reason under uncertainty and with incomplete information is a fundamental requirem... more The ability to reason under uncertainty and with incomplete information is a fundamental requirement of decision support technology. In this paper we argue that the concentration on theoretical techniques for the evaluation and selection of decision options has distracted attention from many of the wider issues in decision making. Although numerical methods of reasoning under uncertainty have strong theoretical foundations, they are representationally weak and only deal with a small part of the decision process. Knowledge based systems, on the other hand, offer greater flexibility but have not been accompanied by a clear decision theory. We describe here work which is under way towards providing a theoretical framework for symbolic decision procedures. A central proposal is an extended form of inference which we call argumentation; reasoning for and against decision options from generalised domain theories. The approach has been successfully used in several decision support applications, but it is argued that a comprehensive decision theory must cover autonomous decision making, where the agent can formulate questions as well as take decisions. A major theoretical challenge for this theory is to capture the idea of reflection to permit decision agents to reason about their goals, what they believe and why, and what they need to know or do in order to achieve their goals.