Computer diagnosis of skin disease: system design and preliminary results

A system for computer-assisted diagnosis of dermatological disease is described. This is an 'expert system' whose knowledge base has been prepared with the aid of a dermatological specialist. The user enters the key elements of the patient's disease history and physical examination into the computer. The computer then returns a summary of the patient's medical record, and a differential diagnosis. The rules of operation by which a given diagnosis was included or rejected is accessible to the user. The system is currently being evaluated in a large dermatology clinic. Preliminary evaluation of the accuracy of diagnosis by the computer indicates that while it nearly always includes the correct diagnosis in its differential diagnosis (94% of cases), it frequently also includes diseases thought to be inappropriate (34% of diseases listed).