Assessing the performance and clinical impact of a computerized prognostic system in severe head injury

The ability to predict outcome in the early stages of severe head injury would have several uses. A computerized system which has been developed in Glasgow to assist clinicians in this task, based on information from over 2500 severely head-injured patients, is described, with particular attention to the testing of the statistical properties of the system, and, more importantly, the assessment of its clinical impact.