ABSTRACT
Expert systems (ES) are particularly well-suited to diagnostic applications, and diagnosing problems is a key function of experts in both agriculture and health care. As between health care and agriculture, however, operational applications of ES support for health care in developing countries may have to be approached more slowly. As new knowledge is developed, diskettes with improved expertise can be supplied as updates to systems, much as new versions of popular software packages replace older ones. Research on specific ES applications and on the results of their use are matters of high priority. ESs have been applied so far to relatively few of the problems of developing countries. Some of the earliest and most successful expert systems were in medicine. These early medical systems continue to be widely influential as logical models and as software resources for use in and out of medical fields.
