Structure-based processing includes a method of diagnosing diseases that
works by arranging diseases, symptoms, and questions into a set of related
disease, symptom, and question structures, such as objects or lists, in
such a way that the structures can be processed to generate a dialogue
with a patient. A structure-based processing system organizes medical
knowledge into formal structures and then executes those structures on a
structure engine to automatically select the next question. Patient
responses to the questions lead to more questions and ultimately to a
diagnosis. An object-oriented embodiment includes software objects
utilized as active, intelligent agents where each object performs its own
tasks and calls upon other objects to perform their tasks at the
appropriate time to arrive at a diagnosis. Alternative symptoms,
synergies, encoding of patient responses, multiple diagnostic modes,
disease profiles or timelines, and the reuse of diagnostic objects enhance
the processing of the system and method.
