| Abstract | Daily renewed composition of parenteral nutrition for
premature and full-term newborn
infants in intensive care is time consuming and prone to
inherent calculation errors. We developed a knowledge based system, VIE-PNN
(Vienna Expert System for Calculating Parenteral Nutrition of Neonates) for
calculating the proposed composition of parenteral nutrition on the basis
of
the calculating algorithm used at our neonatal intensive care unit. The
system needs manual input on postnatal age, body weight, serum electrolytes
(or normal values if not available), amount and content of additional oral
feeds, venous access (peripheral or central), total amount of fluid intake,
and complications such as sepsis (reduced lipid supply) or cholestasis
(reduced amino acid supply). The parenteral nutrition proposal may
interactively be modified by the attending physician. There are
possibilities
for error detection to reduce the probability of typing or calculation
errors. The system was developed to run on IBM compatible PCs and has been
tested clinically. We describe the problem domain, system structure,
clinical
evaluation of VIE-PNN and the calculation of a standard parenteral
nutrition
solution from the data stored in the system's database. |