| (At installation
time specify either British/Australian
spelling or USA/International
English. Sample displays herein
may be using either spelling.) |
|
Our case study
is Australian NSW Supreme
Court Case 2010/83570 (but
this could be the case in other countries)\
Refer Alzheimer's Scam Report and female child sexual abuse legal scam or Medical fact sheet for Australian doctors
|
About
5GL-Doctor (sample
displays follow)
The database is large. It is intended
to be modified or enhanced by
the user. Every medical condition is associated
with a symptom/sign pattern. In response
to an inquiry containing symptoms/signs,
a mathematical technique is used
to find the best matched patterns in
the database. The techniques used are
largely mathematical and take into consideration
such factors as how common a condition is or what
is the probability of two symptoms appearing
in a condition. Another analysis function
can process lab results. Another finds "similar
conditions". Another function allows less exact
symptom/signs in the inquiry. Another continually
removes randomly a symptom/sign and shows what
the short lists would look like without a particular
symptom/sign. You can set options to narrow the
focus of the search. Below are examples. The actual symptom/sign
selection list contains about 9000 specific
items most of which are alternate descriptions or
medical names. There are analysis functions which do not
need such specific names. A log is available that
explains which expert system process contributed what
weight (to a particular entry on the short list) and
for what reason.Did you know? Medscape regularly has case studies and collects statistics as to how often physicians get the test case diagnosis right. In more complex cases, it seems a typical physician has only a 30% chance of getting the correct diagnosis. While we don't know exactly if it is medical students or experienced doctors who tackle these test cases, what is clear is that an in-depth knowledge of medicine is required to do so. Physicians are often busy people. All it takes is one lapse to even loose a career. Software such as 5GL-Doctor may just save such a lapse because it is extremely highly accurate in its production of the short lists. If a physician is about to make a final diagnosis but 5GL-Doctor does not display such on the top 10, then either the database is missing something or a symptom/sign pattern is incorrect or the physician is wrong. It is lovely to read how an expert in medicine came to a conclusion - but there are not that many experts in some conditions. (e.g. Lyme disease). [on this score, in the description of a medical condition the database often includes known legal-medical "pitfalls" especially relevant to the USA legal system. Sometimes the database contains extracts from articles which medical experts considered important for physicians to be aware of in respect of a particular condition].
One of the earliest successes
(by 2011 5GL-Doctor has been
around for some 15 years) was a physician
from a former Eastern block country.
He had a patient with neurological symptoms
he could not pin-point. He purchased
5GL-Doctor out of curiousity as to
what it would come up with - ah, but at the top
of the short list was the exact condition that
subsequently a specialist diagnosed! (5GL-Doctor
listed a number of rarer complex neurological
conditions and the reason this physician decided
to refer the patient to a special neurologist
- to refer a patient to an expert is not as simple in
some former Eastern block countries as it is
in Western countries because sometimes the expert
is not in that country and a Visa and even a medical invitation
may be required. Thus physicians in some countries want
to be very certain before making such referrals.)
Another success was when 5GL-Doctor correctly identified
Lyme Disease for a patient in Britain who had been
sent around for 3 years to different specialists none
of which made the correct diagnosis until a University
expert was asked to assist. If the symptoms/signs are
correct, and laboratory results are consistent, then
unless a particular disease and/or combination is
missing from the database or the symptom/sign pattern
has been defined poorly, then the mathematics will always
put the correct condition at the top of the short
list. (around 4000 symptom/sign patterns but some
contain up to 20 variations explained in the entry. As the software
evolved, more and more of some ever so complex case studies from Medscape
have been included. Thus the software may in fact find the "best fit"
case study and place this on top of the short list instead of a name
of a condition).
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| 5GL-Doctor Professional Expanded Edition, price $US250, two activation codes supplied. The database is much larger mainly because it contains a great many extremely rare conditions and some combinations. (Note: if you are a physician from a Third World country or some former Eastern block countries still recovering, the cost of this edition for you is $US140 and this is the better edition because of the size of the database; if you are in an African country that satisfies the Third World definition then the cost is $US70.) But note that there are a few displays used by this edition which require a larger screen and such may not fit on smaller computer displays. Normally you can adjust the display size and width (you can do this at installation time or later) but not for the few very large displays because there is no way to sensibly reduce the information displayed. Also note that when you do the main analysis, you need to specify which country and/or region you are in (the software remembers this of course, you don't need to do it each time) because that too is considered when producing a short list (e.g. in most countries an inquiry of "high fever" is likely to produce entries at the top to do with infection, but in a country such as India "malaria" would be on top in that inquiry. When in, for example, USA, specifying where exactly is also useful and can make a slight difference to the short lists.) |
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| 5GL-Doctor Professional
Edition, price $US140, two activation
codes supplied. |
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