Automated diagnostic system and method including synergies
First Claim
1. A computerized medical diagnostic system, comprising:
- means for repetitively asking questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, wherein the responses establish time varying symptoms, and each established symptom contributes a weight to a disease;
means for determining one or more synergistic weights based on the symptoms established over time;
means for accumulating established symptom weights and determined synergistic weights as a cumulative weight for the disease; and
means for determining whether the cumulative weight for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis.
8 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Structure-based processing includes a method of diagnosing diseases that works by arranging diseases, symptoms, and questions into a set of related disease, symptom, and question structures, such as objects or lists, in such a way that the structures can be processed to generate a dialogue with a patient. A structure-based processing system organizes medical knowledge into formal structures and then executes those structures on a structure engine to automatically select the next question. Patient responses to the questions lead to more questions and ultimately to a diagnosis. An object-oriented embodiment includes software objects utilized as active, intelligent agents where each object performs its own tasks and calls upon other objects to perform their tasks at the appropriate time to arrive at a diagnosis. Alternative symptoms, synergies, encoding of patient responses, multiple diagnostic modes, disease profiles or timelines, and the reuse of diagnostic objects enhance the processing of the system and method.
-
Citations
35 Claims
-
1. A computerized medical diagnostic system, comprising:
-
means for repetitively asking questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, wherein the responses establish time varying symptoms, and each established symptom contributes a weight to a disease;
means for determining one or more synergistic weights based on the symptoms established over time;
means for accumulating established symptom weights and determined synergistic weights as a cumulative weight for the disease; and
means for determining whether the cumulative weight for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3)
-
-
4. A computerized medical diagnostic system, comprising:
-
a computerized device;
a data structure, stored on the computerized device, configured to store values corresponding to time varying symptoms at different times; and
a diagnosis program executing on the computerized device, the program being configured to;
automatically ask questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, the responses establishing time varying symptoms, each established symptom contributing a weight to a disease, store values corresponding to the established time varying symptoms in the data structure, determine one or more synergistic weights based on the stored values corresponding to the symptoms established over time, accumulate established symptom weights and determined synergistic weights as a cumulative weight for the disease, and determine whether the cumulative weight for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
-
-
13. A computerized medical diagnostic method, comprising:
-
a) repetitively asking questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, the responses establishing a time varying symptom, the established symptom contributing a weight to at least one disease;
b) determining one or more synergistic weights based on the symptom established over time;
c) adding the established symptom weight and the synergistic weight(s) to a total score for each applicable disease, wherein the adding is performed in unison for the applicable diseases; and
d) determining whether the total score for a particular disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15)
-
-
16. A computerized medical diagnostic method, comprising:
-
repetitively asking questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, the responses establishing overlapping symptoms which occur over a time period, each established symptom contributing a weight to a disease;
determining one or more synergistic weights based on the overlapping symptoms established over time;
accumulating established symptom weights and determined synergistic weights as a cumulative weight for the disease; and
determining whether the cumulative weight for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
-
-
22. A computerized medical diagnostic method, comprising:
-
repetitively asking questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, the responses establishing symptom values over a time period, each established symptom contributing a weight to a disease;
computing a total symptom value over the time period for a selected established symptom;
determining a synergistic weight based on the total symptom value over the time period;
accumulating established symptom weights and the determined synergistic weight as a cumulative weight for the disease; and
determining whether the cumulative weight for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26)
-
-
27. A method of computerized medical diagnosis, comprising:
-
repetitively asking questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, wherein the responses establish a symptom, and the established symptom contributes a weight to a disease;
determining if the established symptom is the first significant symptom for the disease;
providing a synergistic weight based on the determining;
adjusting a disease score for the disease based on the established symptom weight and the synergistic weight; and
calculating whether the disease score for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (28, 29)
-
-
30. A computerized medical diagnostic system, comprising:
-
a computerized device;
a data structure, stored on the computerized device, configured to store synergistic weights; and
a diagnosis program executing on the computerized device, the program being configured to;
automatically ask questions over time to elicit responses from a patient, wherein the responses establish a symptom, and the established symptom contributes a weight to a disease selected from a plurality of diseases, determine if the established symptom is the first significant symptom for the disease, provide a one of the synergistic weights based on the determination, adjust a disease score for the disease based on the established symptom weight and the synergistic weight, and calculate whether the disease score for the disease reaches or passes a threshold so as to declare a diagnosis. - View Dependent Claims (31, 32, 33, 34, 35)
-
Specification