Cold And Flu In detail

1. The first task in the guide is the Introduction action, which welcomes the end-user.

2. The next task is the Patient information enquiry, that collects the following data items:
   1. If the patient has a cough, what kind of cough is it?
   2. This data item has a range of three values: No cough, Mild to moderate and Severe. The end-user has to select one of these. By default, No cough will be selected.
   2. Has the patient received a nasal spray flu vaccine in the past few days?
   3. This data item is of type boolean. The end-user has to select yes or no. By default, no will be selected.
   3. What is the patient's age?
   4. This data item is of type integer.
   4. Which symptoms does the patient complain about?
   5. A list of symptoms is defined as the range for this data item. Because the status of the data item is optional, the enquiry task can complete without this data, which means that the end-user can avoid selecting any of these.
   5. What is the patient's temperature?
   6. This data item is of type real, as temperature is a continuous physical quantity.

3. Next, the patient information is used to determine whether the patient has a cold or flu. The Diagnosis decision is based on the table below.
4. It has 3 candidates: Cold, Flu and Other, in case the diagnosis is neither cold nor flu.
   
   

   Symptoms	Cold	Flu
   Fever	Rare	Characteristic, high (102-104F)
   Headache	Rare	Prominent
   General aches, pains	Slight	Usual; often severe
   Extreme exhaustion	Never	Early and prominent
   Stuffy nose	Common	Sometimes
   Sore throat	Common	Sometimes
   Cough	Mild to moderate	Common; can become severe
   		*Nasal spray flu vaccine contains weakened flu viruses and can occasionally induce flu

5. The arguments for flu can be divided into 3 groups:
   1. Arguments that provide some support:
      • Severe cough
      • Recent nasal spray flu vaccine
      • Extreme exhaustion
      • General aches and pains
      • Headache
   2. Confirming arguments:
      • Fever
   3. Excluding arguments:
      • No fever
        
        
6. The recommendation rule for flu states that flu will only be recommended if two conditions are met:
   1. Net support for flu is higher or equal to 1 – meaning there’s at the very least some argument for flu.
   2. Net support for flu is higher or equal to net support for cold – meaning there’s some argument for both, but more support for flu.
      
      
7. The arguments for cold can be divided into 2 groups:
   1. Arguments that provide some support:
      • Mild to moderate cough
      • Runny stuffy nose
      • Sore throat
   2. Arguments that are somewhat against:
      • Extreme exhaustion
      • Headache
      • Fever
8. The recommendation rule for cold is the same as for the flu candidate.
   
   
9. The Other candidate has no arguments. It’s recommendation rule states that it will only be recommended if the net support for the other two candidates is less than 1. So it will only be recommended if there’s no support for either cold or flu.

4. The Diagnosis decision is followed by three actions: Cold treatment, Flu treatment and Exit Guide. These actions are set to either run or get discarded, depending on the result of the decision.
   • The Cold treatment action has a precondition stating that it will only run if the result of the Diagnosis decision is Cold.
   • The Flu treatment action has a precondition stating that it will only run if the result of the Diagnosis decision is Flu.
   • The Exit Guide action has a precondition stating that it will only run if the result of the Diagnosis decision is Other.
   • The two treatment actions provide the end-user with information regarding the treatment of each illness; the Exit Guide action states that the guide is inadequate for the end-user’s needs.

5. The Recommend vaccine action is separated from the workflow; it is set to be triggered by data. It has a state trigger that sets it to run only if a patient is over 65 years old. For patients under 65, it will remain dormant. This task recommends a flu vaccine for people over 65.

 

If you have installed the Tallis Toolset, you can find this sample in the World > Samples folder in the ACL Web Repository.

Run this sample file

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