Portable Decision Support System For Emergent High Mountain Syndrome Management - Application via Wireless Service of Yushan National Park.

Introduction: With unique geographic features, mountain climbing has been a popular outdoor activity in Taiwan. Related conferences on safety issues were held by Ministry of Education. It is found that mortality and morbidity of high mountain syndrome (HMS) is highly reverse related to timely diagnosis and management. Generally, it is not easy for mountain climbers to manage this condition without an expert on site. Several climbers died from HMS every year. In 2005, wireless internet service was provided in Yushan National Park (YSNP), the highest national parkin Northeast Asia. We therefore began this project - building an emergent HMS consulting system based on this service. Method: After feasibility and necessity evaluation, we extracted the field knowledge and revised the logic into "if-then" rules to build the knowledge base. Exsys CORVID served as inference engine and web-service interface, which was implemented on a web server and could be retrieved via YSNP's wireless service. Results: A decision supporting system (DSS) prompting necessary questions and then giving referential suggestions was built and was validated helpful by alpine club members of our school. Discussions: The field specialists instructed us to acquire the knowledge from NEJM. Materials of which can be transformed into decision tree with backward chaining. We therefore decided to build a DSS based on the scenario that when suspicious HMS occurred, climbers can access the system for help anytime wherever YSNP's wireless service is accessible. We searched the internet and found "Exsys CORVID 30-Day Evaluation" (http://www.exsys.com/evaldl.html) as web-based inference engine which met our requirement for preliminary test. Conclusion: Without experts' help, making timely management for HMS is hard for climbers. Our preliminary system may fit the need. Further testing is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]