Following the intense research activIties of the last decade, artificial neural networks have emerged as one of the most promising new technologies for improving the quality of healthcare. Many successful applications of neural networks to biomedical problems have been reported which demonstrate, convincingly, the distinct benefits of neural networks, although many ofthese have only undergone a limited clinical evaluation. Healthcare providers and developers alike have discovered that medicine and healthcare are fertile areas for neural networks: the problems here require expertise and often...