Combining conceptual graphs and argumentation for aiding in the teleexpertise

•Improving the reasoning in conceptual graphs for better knowledge representation.•Incorporation of argumentation algorithms for medical decision making processes.•Structuring of reasoning procedures to guarantee traceability in the telemedicine.•Elucidation of the mechanisms underlying some ethical problems in telemedicine.•Effective benefits for both medical professionals and patients in the remote sites.

Current medical information systems are too complex to be meaningfully exploited. Hence there is a need to develop new strategies for maximising the exploitation of medical data to the benefit of medical professionals. It is against this backdrop that we want to propose a tangible contribution by providing a tool which combines conceptual graphs and Dung׳s argumentation system in order to assist medical professionals in their decision making process. The proposed tool allows medical professionals to easily manipulate and visualise queries and answers for making decisions during the practice of teleexpertise. The knowledge modelling is made using an open application programming interface (API) called CoGui, which offers the means for building structured knowledge bases with the dedicated functionalities of graph-based reasoning via retrieved data from different institutions (hospitals, national security centre, and nursing homes). The tool that we have described in this study supports a formal traceable structure of the reasoning with acceptable arguments to elucidate some ethical problems that occur very often in the telemedicine domain.