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The medical community is presently in a state of transition from a situation dominated by the paper medical record to a future situation where all patient data will be available on-line by an electronic clinical information system. In data-intensive clinical environments, such as intensive care units (ICUs), clinical patient data are already fully managed by such systems in a number of hospitals. However, providing facilities for storing and retrieving patient data to clinicians is not enough; clinical information systems should also offer facilities to assist clinicians in dealing with hard clinical problems. Extending an information system’s capabilities by integrating it with a decision-support system may be a solution. In this paper, we describe the development of a probabilistic and decision-theoretic system that aims to assist clinicians in diagnosing and treating patients with pneumonia in the intensive-care unit. Its underlying …