Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can “think like an African traditional doctor”. The system proposes to model and to use attitudes taken and concepts used by African traditional doctors when facing cases. It is designed to go deep into the concepts of African traditional medicine (ATM) by dealing with all the possible interpretations of those concepts, and to produce more much satisfying and accurate support for medical diagnosis and prescription than existing systems. Design/methodology/approach – To take into account the sometimes strange concepts used and attitudes taken by African traditional healers, including mystical considerations, the system relies on a deep ontology describing all those concepts and attitudes in a more computer readable manner allowing a multi-agent system to have full access to ATM knowledge. Ethnological inquiries, literary analysis and interviews of traditional doctors (the holders of African medicine knowledge) were perf...
['Armel Ayimdji Tekemetieu', 'Souleymane Koussoube', 'Laure Pauline Fotso']
An ontology-based computer-aided diagnosis system in African traditional medicine: At the Sorcerer’s Stone