Preface

Argumentation for Consumers of Healthcare

Volume

Papers from the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

Different notions of argument historically have played a central role in artificial intelligence, such as proof trees, sets of assumptions, and explanations of probabilis- tic inference. These notions have been used to model the diagnostic reasoning and decision-making of medical experts. However, it was beyond the scope of that research to address information needs of the lay person. It was assumed that a medical expert, trained to interpret explanations produced by the system, would medi- ate between system and lay person. The goal of this symposium is to investigate the role of argumentation in future intelligent healthcare systems, focusing on systems designed to interact directly with health-care consumers, or with healthcare workers and caregivers with little training.