[mattiask]

Every time I watch an episode of House or read a story like this I think "Why isn't there an expert system for diagnostics". The notion of a person being able to manage such vasts amount of knowledge seems ridiculous and cost-ineffective.

If you could enter a bunch of positive and negative statements together with various medical records, and have the computer being able to ask additional queries, it seems a good system would be able to narrow down a list substantially. It would also side-step a lot of cognitive problems we humans face.

Now, I'm sure there are systems like this but they probably just aren't sophisticated , widespread enough or don't have large enough database. Or have they simply not yet reached widespread use because they cost too much, what's holding them back?

* Found this article on the topic: http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/clinical-syst...