Drools Decision table for symptom reporting

Question

We're in the process of implementing a symptom reporting decision tree: patients answers questions about whether a symptom is present or not, and in the end , the reported symptoms lead to an outcome. Mapping the symptoms to an outcome can be achieved with a guided decision table.

The goal is to reach an outcome by asking as few questions as possible; there will be 10+ symptoms, but if patient reports a fever in combination with a headache, the other symptoms don't matter. The question is: how could we implement this as such that Drools determines which question needs to be asked?

Answer 1

For a certain diagnosis, the minimum number of questions can only be asked if the diagnosis is known before you ask the questions.

On the average, asking questions where a positive answer halves the number of possibilities should reduce the number of remaining options as fast as possible. Thus, count the marks in a column, and order them by the absolute difference of the count from m, where m is half the number of rows or diagnoses.

(Absolutely th best way would be to have a doctor look at the patient up front.)