title: Is it possible to make a diagnosis in an ambulance?
abstract: We have developed a computer method to make a diagnosis for an emergency patient using the data reported by a person who has no technical knowledge of medicine such as a member of the public or an ambulance attendant. The speedy instruction will be made possible by a computer diagnosis, by which an ambulance attendant could deliver the patient expeditiously to the most appropriate medical facility. We first conducted a survey by means of questionnaire and investigated the relationship between the patients' data and diagnosis of medical doctors. It was shown that fairly accurate diagnosis could be made on treatment, hospitalization, an appropriate medical department and need of urgent care, using simple information like age, sex, cause of illness or injury, and 15 symptoms which trained laymen could judge. Accuracy of the diagnosis was 79.3% on the average.
mesh_terms: D000552:Ambulances; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000592:standards; D004630:Emergencies; D006801:Humans