| Title | A Mathematical Approach to Medical Diagnosis: Application to Congenital Heart Disease |
| Author(s) | Homer R. Warner, MD, PhD; Alan F. Toronto, MD; L. George Veasey, MD; and Robert Stephenson, PhD |
| Source | JAMA, Vol. 177, No. 3, Pages 177-183 |
| Publication Date | 22-Jul-61 |
| Abstract | The diagnosis of disease from clinical data is considered by the medical profession as a subtle art which may be mastered only after years of careful study and extensive personal experience. Although rapid advances are being made in the development of new and improved methods for acquiring objective information from a patient concerning his illness, similar progress has not been made in analyzing and improving the logical process by which a diagnosis is deduced from this information. The present study was undertaken to find an explicit mathematical expression for this logical process, with the hope that such an expression might (1) improve the accuracy of diagnosis in certain fields of medicine, (2) lead to a more scientific approach to the teaching of medical diagnosis, and (3) provide a means, with the help of an electronic computer, for relieving the physician of the task of storing and recalling for practical use in diagnosis an ever-increasing mass of statistical data. The derivation of such an equation is herein presented and its usefulness illustrated in its application to the diagnosis of congenital heart disease from clinical data. |