An expert system is a computer program that draws on the knowledge of human experts captured in a knowledge base to solve problems that normally require human expertise. The system emulates expert thought to solve significant problems in a particular domain of expertise. In its simplest form, an expert system has three major components: An interface, monitor and key board that allows two way communications between the user and the system. The system generally has an inference/reasoning engine where the knowledge is extracted and manipulated to solve the problem at hand. Inference engine strategies may be either forward chaining, which involves the system reasoning from data and information gained by consultation from the user to form a hypothesis, or backward chaining, which involves the system starting with a hypothesis and then attempting to find data and information to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Both strategies are included in most expert systems.
Expert Systems can be found in almost every sector of business as well as Federal, State and local agencies. The financial sector has benefited greatly from the use of Decision Support Systems in the forecast of stocks and trading support. AIQ is a company that provides an expert trading system that helps investors makes decisions based on millions of computations and reports listing the securities, groups, sectors, futures, indexes, and mutual funds that have passed a screening process. The users of AIQs TradingExpert Pro can rely on the reports to find hidden opportunities, and to alert them to critical price, volume, and trend changes. This AI-based trading system provides several tools for determining market direction and for anticipating reversals in market direction (http://www.aiqsystems.com).
Another sector that is thriving in the use of expert systems is the medical field. Pharmaceutical companies have been using expert systems for years to identify different formulas in prescriptions and dosages for patients. A formulation expert system product called PFES (Product Formulation Expert System) was created from two specific formulation expert systems and further enhanced and marketed as Formulogic. Formulogic gave rise to successful applications in the pharmaceutical, paints, food and drink, healthcare and cosmetic sectors. Some of the designers of the original system decided to form a new company called KnowledgeBench (http://www.knowledgebench.com). KnowledgeBench sought to re-write Formulogic from scratch using modern methods and tools such as Agile development and the industry standard J2EE platform. KnowledgeBench Ltd provides support for Formulogic systems by the following:
??? An advanced rules engine to provide expert systems to help create new formulations and recipes based on marketing briefs or ingredient characteristics.
??? Advanced pattern matching search facilities to enable finding ???most similar??? formulations or recipes.
??? Process modeling and tracking facilities to enable control of the NPD process and provide comprehensive management and regulatory facilities.
??? Knowledge Management via a portal based web interface enabling full collaboration on NPD documents and information and integration with existing databases and applications
While both of these expert systems will provide lucrative opportunities for the intended users, the KnowledgeBench expert system support will provide the most profit for pharmaceutical companies that use the system to correctly determine formulations for prescription drugs and supplies. Given the scope of the medical sector worldwide, this system can be integrated into any number of pharmacies worldwide and help integrate prescription drug software and support and assist drug companies and pharmacists in making proper doses and formulas.
