Patient Safety versus Computer Diagnosis

Abstract

The development of the Internet technology has caused telemedicine diagnosis systems to be commonly available. The most crucial aspect of the patient's safety in such systems is a problem of safe diagnosis. There are two factors at the stake here. The first one is a human factor in the form of user; it is especially severe when the user is not a physician. The second one is the accuracy of the diagnosis process. The best way to handle possible diagnosis errors is to apply measures of sensitivity, specificity and ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve. We examine these measures on a sample diagnosis system against a real-life data. It turns out that values of these measures are strictly associated with another measure: an indication threshold. Therefore, the accuracy of diagnosis may be to a large extent determined by the chosen threshold. We propose several methods for minimizing the impact of this factor.