Designing an Expert System for Management of Crowding and Overcrowding in Emergency Departments

Providing service for patients in a rapid and efficient manner is one of the main issues in concern to Emergency Department (ED). Due to the imbalance between needs and the capacity of providing service, ED faces an emergency situation. In this paper, through the use of information gathered from related literature, an Expert System (ES) has been designed in order to detect ED crowding and overcrowding and provide appropriate solutions in order to return to a normal situation. In relation to this matter, National Emergency Department Overcrowding Scale (NEDOCS) has been used as an indicator. According to the value of NEDOCS the status of ED can be categorized in five groups consisting of normal, crowded, overcrowded, dangerous and disastrous classes. Furthermore, based on the situation of ED and in accordance to the related literature, proper solutions are provided by the proposed ES in order to overcome the adverse status. Developed ES consisting of 30 rules provides the mentioned solutions based on interactions with users, referral to knowledge base and necessary inferences via user interface. Results of applying the proposed ES indicate 81 percent compatibility between solutions provided by the ES and those proposed by ED’s experts.