Differential diagnosis (DDX) is the application of medical knowledge to diagnose an ailment.
We think diagnostic training should be an integral part of medical education, from the first year of medical school through practice. NBME and NBOME seem to agree—80% of test items require a correct diagnosis to answer the question. Sadly, misdiagnosis continues to plague medicine.
At best, students may be walked through only a few dozen individual cases in class before their third year, delaying individual diagnostic practice until residency.
Our mission is to improve diagnostic ability.
We have a four-component strategy to improve DDX capability.
Experts determine common and important diseases for a single chief complaint. For Acute Chest Pain, these include myocardial infarction, angina, etc. They name the features most commonly present for each (over 40 years old, crackles), and how frequently those findings are present. We use artificial intelligence to generate thousands of cases. Finally, we work with the expert to select the best ones.
When a student does an assignment, they read the case vignette and diagnose the ailment. On an incorrect diagnosis, our software shows how to better differentiate between their diagnosis and the correct answer.