AIDA – Experiences in Compensating the Mutual Weaknesses of Knowledge-based and Object-oriented Development in a Complex Dental Planning Domain

Objectives: Dentistry is a discipline with two properties that pose a serious challenge to knowledge based decision support: (1) It has to integrate six subdisciplines ranging from conservative measures to invasive disciplines, such as implantology; (2) A plan may have to cover a complex treatment often lasting one year or more. It is the aim of the AIDA-project1 to set up a planning strategy that is suited to incorporate all dental peculiarities in one methodology. Methods: Generic tasks, that can be assigned to individual persons involved in dental treatment, have been designed with the help of KADS. They have been integrated into a planning super-structure for the planning of all dental solution alternatives, that can principally be applied on the basis of the given patient status. Results: Besides an evaluation of the implemented planning system itself, it has been evaluated how well the development is supported by (1) knowledgeengineering methods and (2) object-oriented methods. Conclusion: Common knowledge-based tools are not powerful enough for the planning of complex dental constructions. Therefore, a solution combining objectoriented and knowledge-based methods is proposed.