Zakaria KHATAR et al., International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research, 9(10), October 2021, 1361 – 1366 1361 ABSTRACT In this paper, we propose a computer-aided diagnostic system based on a fuzzy expert system, in order to help physicians,  make the right diagnosis and o er an opportunity to improve access to health care in rural areas in Morocco, where there is a lack of infrastructure and medical experts. The system is mainly based on the diagnoses of various physicians. We collect different diagnostic decisions of a specific disease according to its relevant symptoms for different physicians. Diagnostic decisions of different experts and severity levels of each symptom are modeled using linguistic fuzzy values. Then we form a system based on fuzzy rules to combine the different expert diagnoses and obtain a general diagnosis. Moreover, we propose an application to COVID-19 disease to test how well the proposed model may be applied in practice for different diseases. Key words: Computer-aided diagnostic system, fuzzy expert system, diagnostic decisions, fuzzy rules, COVID-19. 1. INTRODUCTION The objective of any health policy is to take into consideration all the health problems of the population, rural or urban, in order to improve living conditions. The major problem for developing countries, including Morocco, is to guarantee access to healthcare, affordability, and the best quality of care. However, until today a large number of people do not receive the necessary medical care especially in rural areas [10]. In general, the country's rural public health systems are struggling to attract, retain, and ensure the regular presence of highly qualified health professionals. It is well known that many physicians are unwilling to work in rural areas because of the lack of facilities, even if they receive high salaries. In Morocco, data from the Ministry of Health estimates a deficit of 16,000 doctors and nurses and that 45% of doctors are located in the region between Casablanca and Rabat [11]. Nevertheless, many of the health problems experienced by rural populations are preventable and easily treatable. So far more than 40% of the country's population lives in rural areas, access to care is often difficult, if not impossible, to put into practice [3]. This critical problem has prompted us to reflect on adopting a strategy that can guarantee the resolution of the problem of access to care based on digital tools and in particular on Medical Informatics. The health fields have found their place among these fields to use computer science. The intersection between informatics and healthcare has been formulated in a new field called "medical IT" [7], where medical data is collected, stored, processed, analyzed, recovered, and used in various medical operations. Different disciplines have emerged to cover the wide range of specialties required by the field of medical informatics [16, 12]. One of the areas where medical IT shows its great influence on healthcare is the aid to the diagnosis of diseases according to certain rules implemented on huge quantities of medical records of patients. Sometimes these diagnoses can help improve and speed up the provision of a required medical assistant, which would help improve the quality of life for humans. In order to reach a satisfactory decision, the medical decision-making process involves different actions to be taken, that can help improve patient care outcomes, such as diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and therapeutic follow-up [17]. One of the most common problems in medical diagnosis is uncertainty. The use of the fuzzy set theory helps dealing with this uncertainty. Fuzzy logic was applied in medical systems [13] almost 20 years after its introduction by Zadeh [22]. Moreover, it has recently prompted interesting implementations [4, 6, 1, 23]. The fuzzy logic is considered a valuable tool for describing medical concepts [19, 18]. It is an approach that provides "degrees of truth" and not the common Medical Fuzzy Expert System for Diagnosis And Distribution of Doctors in Rural Areas in Morocco: COVID-19 Case Study Zakaria KHATAR 1 , Omar BOUATTANE 1 , Dounia BENTALEB 2 1 Laboratory SSDIA, ENSET Mohammedia, University Hassan II of Casablanca, Morocco, zakariakh27@gmail.com, o.bouattane@gmail.com 2 Laboratory of Mathematics and Applications, FST Mohammedia, University Hassan II of Casablanca, Morocco, douniaabentaleb@gmail.com Received Date : September 04, 2021 Accepted Date : September 25, 2021 Published Date : October 07, 2021 ISSN 2347 - 3983 Volume 9. No.10, October 2021 International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research Available Online at http://www.warse.org/IJETER/static/pdf/file/ijeter119102021.pdf https://doi.org/10.30534/ijeter/2021/119102021