How do physicians make a decision?

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical model describing how the physicians actually make a diagnostic decision. Next to a formalization of diagnostic decision making as done by the physicians, this paper shows that how can we design and develop a new approach to medical diagnosis. The model was challenged to diagnose a series of actual patients. Real clinical data was entered into the model and its decisions were compared with internist’s diagnoses. The results indicated good performance with respect to physician’s point of view, although the model had low specificity. The proposed method is effective and can be applied to simulate medical diagnosis as done by the physicians.