Decision Support Core System for Cancer Therapies Using ASP-HEX

MAMMA-DSCS (mammary carcinoma decision support core system) is a prototype implementation designed for the support of decision processes for breast cancer (mammary carcinoma) treatment plans: Given a set of patient values, the system suggests different applicable treatment plans. As additional knowledge sources, MAMMA-DSCS uses external ontologies containing further information and correlations which are not directly tied to the tumor itself (e.g. toxicities, drug interactions). As a consequence, general knowledge like the substance composition of a specific therapy and its pharmacological hierarchy, can be separated from the knowledge about the applicability of therapies for a patient. The latter is encoded in an ASP program that is able to access the external ontologies and to take the obtained information into account for determining the set of all therapy plans that may be applied in a given situation. The ASP program models medical knowledge combining general guidelines and up-to-date expert knowledge for treating breast cancer on a very finegrained level, originating from a hospital in Germany.