Nearly 100,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year due to diagnostic errors, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. -Washington, Jan. 21, 2004

At present doctors attempt to diagnose the disease of a patient on the basis of symptoms reported by the patient. Very often the patient reports only those symptoms that he feels are relevant i.e. those symptoms that may be causing him the most discomfort or pain. He may omit those symptoms that are mild and less distressful. Thus the doctor does not get a complete picture of all the symptoms and he may arrive at a wrong diagnosis and he could administer wrong medication that may not cure the actual disease but, in addition, may cause unwanted side-effects.

COMPUTER CLINIC, on the other hand, gets a complete picture by asking the patient sequentially a series of questions regarding all relevant symptoms. For this reason the diagnosis arrived at is very accurate. This can be illustrated from real life case studies.

CASE 1:

Mr.Stephan Demta retired from the Bihar Civil Service and was living in his house in Lalpur, Peace Road, Ranchi in the present Jharkhand State of India. For some time he had been having some medical problems and he was undergoing treatment by his family doctor but he could not get any relief. During one of his visits to my house I requested him to allow my computer program to diagnose his disease. The program diagnosed his disease as cancer. Without disclosing this finding I advised him to get himself examined at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at New Delhi. He later did go to New Delhi and he stayed with his brother-in-law Commodore Anthony Barla of the Indian Navy and got himself examined at the Institute where cancer was confirmed by a biopsy. Unfortunately, the cancer had not been detected by the doctor in Ranchi who had been treating him for some other disease and the cancer had progressed to a stage where nothing could be done and Mr.Demta died within a few months.

CASE 2:

Mr.Sushil Kerketta originally hailed from Chainpur in Gumla District and is now residing at Bhurkunda with his wife who is working as a primary school teacher. He went to a doctor because he was experiencing pain in his abdomen. The doctor suspected ulcer and began treatment for ulcer but his pain reappeared after some respite. I advised him to let my computer program diagnose his condition. It diagnosed his case as appendicitis. He did not take this diagnosis seriously but a few days later he went to Patna, which is the capital of Bihar State, and consulted a doctor there who diagnosed his condition as appendicitis and advised immediate surgical intervention. Mr.Sushil Kerketta underwent an operation for removal of his appendix at Patna. He is now running a bus provided by the Jharkhand State Government under the self-employment scheme for tribals.

CASE 3:

My own son, Amol, was suffering from high fever and I took him to a retired military doctor who used to sit in a clinic beside the Petrol Station at Kantatoli Chowk (crossing) in Ranchi town. There was no improvement in his condition even after a few weeks of his treatment. Then I decided to consult my computer program that I had just recently developed. It diagnosed my son's disease as typhoid. I immediately took my son to a clinical laboratory and requested the laboratory to carry out the Vidal test of his blood. The test was positive confirming typhoid. I then had my son treated for typhoid by another doctor. Today Amol is studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree in St.Xavier's College, Ranchi.

Sometimes, correct diagnosis could make the difference between life and death and the simple computer program that I have named COMPUTER CLINIC diagnoses diseases accurately most of the time. It is, therefore, a program that every household must possess. It could save someone's life one day.

Very often people say that a lot of information regarding diseases and their symptoms are available free on the internet so why should anyone purchase COMPUTER CLINIC? It is true that a large number of websites, such as Yahoo.com, carry a lot of information regarding diseases and their symptoms but none of them assist us in identifying a disease from a given set of symptoms. Myelectronicmd.com comes nearest in suggesting a list of diseases and conditions that may be causing pain or discomfort at a particular location of the body but it does not definitively pinpoint the exact disease or condition. It would require an intensive study of all the diseases to be capable of identifying a particular disease from a given set of symptoms. In other words he would have to become an expert. For example when a patient comes to a doctor and complains of acute pain in the abdomen the doctor has to be aware of all the diseases or conditions that may cause acute abdominal pain. The patient could be suffering pain in the abdomen due to peptic ulcer, liver cirrhosis, peritonitis, appendicitis, ectopic pregnancy, septic abortion, or diseased pancreas, kidney, gall-bladder or urinary bladder. The doctor must not only have knowledge of all these diseases or conditions but he must also be able to differentiate between them and identify the particular disease or condition that is causing the abdominal pain in that particular patient. For a layman it would indeed be a long and arduous task to study all the free information available on the internet and acquire the capability of identifying a particular disease or condition from the symptoms. In other words he has to first become an expert, maybe by studying all the free material available on the internet after spending many days or months. (I spent nearly four years in compiling the database, devising a dichotomous differentiation, devising a computer program and in testing and perfecting the expert system.) COMPUTER CLINIC does not require the user to become an expert nor to be connected to the internet because COMPUTER CLINIC is itself a stand alone expert system and it can help the layman diagnose diseases within seconds without himself having any prior knowledge of diseases and their symptoms.

I have used the very powerful string handling capability of BASIC language that runs in DOS mode in designing this expert system. DOS maybe a 'primitive' operating system but all Windows programs whether in the United States or anywhere else in the world support DOS. Thus COMPUTER CLINIC runs on any computer that supports DOS including Windows.

-Robert P.Minz

Western Union