Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Collective intelligence in medical science

Crowd working seems to be beneficial for physicians.

Reuters: When diagnosing a patient's ills, there's strength in numbers

An international online project was conducted to prove the correctness of collaborative diagnosing. Over a thousand of medical doctors participated in the test for correct diagnosis. The correct rate was only 62.5% in physicians and doctors-in-training. However, after consulting with other residents, the rate was raised to 85.6%, according to the report.

It looks quite natural that collaboration among specialists results in better outcome, for ordinary people. But, physicians are usually proud of their ability of diagnosing patient. They often hesitate to consult with other doctor. Furthermore, there are some paradoxical etiologies in many regions in medical science. Therefore, it seems a little surprising result, in my sense.

Especially, psychiatry is one of the specialties in which medical diagnosis is controversial. The previous year, WHO released ICD-11, revised from ICD-10. There are many points of argument in ICD-11. So far, consensus in diagnosis itself is still yet to be developed.

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