Guided Interactive Diagnostic Assistance

Abstract

One of the significant challenges and opportunities in computer-assisted healthcare is how to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients. With respect to the past, diagnosis and treatment have become more and more difficult because of two major reasons: a global society where people, goods, and, consequently, diseases travel very easily; and a growing awareness and emergence of very rare “orphan” pathologies that affect an extremely small percentage of the population. Physicians are very often required to diagnose and correctly treat diseases that they are not familiar with. Especially in this context, but also with more frequent pathologies, computer assistance can become an essential tool in healthcare, especially if it supports all relevant information such as protocols, exceptions, best practices, condition-specific guidelines, and so on, in addition to diagnosis.