Homework: Decision Support Systems
                              
            (Introduction to Medical Informatics)
         (http://www.cpmc.columbia.edu/edu/textbook)

You want to implement a decision-support system to solve the
following problem. Many patients with the disease diabetes
mellitus take a medication called insulin to control their
blood glucose level. Depending on what they have eaten, what
their current blood glucose level is, the severity of the
diabetes, and other factors, they give themselves one or
more insulin injections per day, with different amounts and
types (short-acting, long-acting) of insulin. Figuring out
how much and what type of insulin to give is complex, and a
mistake is potentially lethal. A decision-support system
that advises patients on when, how much, and what type of
insulin to take would be very helpful. Assume the patient
will type in their own data, and the system will give advice
about their next insulin injection.

(1) Which of the decision-support system methodologies we
discussed in class (or that are in the readings) would be
best suited to this problem..

(2) Discuss why you choose this approach, keeping in mind
the following issues: how data get into the system, how the
knowledge base is acquired (eg, from diabetes experts,
trained on real data, _), whether the system is passive or
active, and any others you deem relevant.

(3) Describe the disadvantages of your approach.