This project has emerged as a by-product of the IHISM
concept by developing a system which provides similar
services in the form of an expert system to the public with
internet access. The system is meant to act as an online
‘expert’ in HIV and AIDS information such that that some
information may have to be derived through inference as
opposed to simple data retrieval. The system will accept as
input an FAQ from the user and provide the most relevant
answer to the question. Dissemination of accurate
information about HIV is an essential element of the national
AIDS prevention strategies and thus information service
provided by this system has to be accurate. The challenge is
that users may ask the questions differently in pursuit of the
same answer and the system should be able to systematically analyse the questions and provide an appropriate answer. The
main challenge is to determine the various forms in which a
typical FAQ question could be mapped to the relevant
answer. Another challenge is to determine the degree to
which the answer is relevant to a particular question. To
address the former we derive various keywords for any input
question and to address the latter we employ the use of
certainty factors offered within the Corvid Exsys Expert
system developer [10] used to develop the system.