{"id":14991,"date":"2017-11-15T17:28:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T17:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/mycin\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T17:28:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T17:28:56","slug":"mycin","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin","title":{"rendered":"Mycin"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_mycin_mean\">What Does Mycin Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The Mycin project was a computer program used to diagnose infections and figure out which types of bacteria were causing them in patients. The system was actually not used in clinical practice, but it constitutes an excellent early example of a digital expert system and a precursor to much more sophisticated machine learning and knowledge base systems years later.\n<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_mycin\">Techopedia Explains Mycin<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Mycin was developed at Stanford University in the 1970s. The<br \/>\nknowledge base of the Mycin program had around 600 rules. Users would enter answers to a series of \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d questions and short answer questions, and the program would eventually choose a weighted probability for a diagnosis. Part of the limitation of this early program was simply computing power \u2013 because the program was estimated to take up to half an hour to get through in a clinical environment, it was not considered effective enough to replace human diagnosis at the time. Ethical questions also contributed to the decision not to use Mycin for clinical diagnosis.\n<\/p>\n<p>However, Mycin has proven to be a stepping stone to more modern systems and described in a book on rule-based expert systems by B. G. Buchanan and E. H. Shortliffe as \u201cthe granddaddy of them all\u201d in terms of early artificial intelligence for machine learning systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Mycin Mean? The Mycin project was a computer program used to diagnose infections and figure out which types of bacteria were causing them in patients. The system was actually not used in clinical practice, but it constitutes an excellent early example of a digital expert system and a precursor to much more sophisticated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"definitioncat":[241,253,230],"class_list":["post-14991","definition","type-definition","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","definitioncat-computer-science","definitioncat-healthcare-it","definitioncat-privacy-and-compliance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.2 (Yoast SEO v24.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Mycin? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Mycin and why it matters.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mycin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Mycin and why it matters.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Techopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@techopedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Margaret Rouse\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5\"},\"headline\":\"Mycin\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-11-15T17:28:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin\"},\"wordCount\":218,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin#respond\"]}],\"articleSection\":\"\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/32808\/mycin\",\"name\":\"What is Mycin? 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