PEIRS (Pathology Expert Interpretative Reporting System) appends interpretative comments to chemical pathology reports.

The knowledge acquisition strategy is the Ripple Down Rules method, which has allowed a pathologist to build over 2300 rules without knowledge engineering or programming support. New rules are added in minutes, and maintenance tasks are a trivial extension to the pathologist’s routine duties. PEIRS commented on about 100 reports/day. Domains covered include thyroid function tests, arterial blood gases, glucose tolerance tests, hCG, catecholamines and a range of other hormones. PIERS was implemented in the St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, but is now out of use while a new hospital information system is settling in. Once this is stable, PIERS will need to be interfaced into the system.

PEIRS is a hospital-based system.

PEIRS has been developed by the Department of Chemical Pathology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney

Department of Chemical Pathology, St. Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA, Phone: (612) 361 2156