Medical Diagnostic and Treatment Software Holds Potential to Improve Patient Care Worldwide

Medical Diagnostic and Treatment Software Holds Potential to Save Lives and Improve Patient Care Worldwide

             Dr. Maximo Jose Rodriguez Rivera and Dr. Alejandro Dominguez Brito of the Dominican Republic utilize a Tablet PC to field test the NxOpinion user interface. (October 2003) According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, diagnostic mistakes kill about 100,000 individuals in U.S. hospitals each year. After a patient died because of a mistake, Dr. Joel C. Robertson of Michigan Neuropharmacology decided to develop a technological solution that may assist clinicians assess a patient's health more swiftly and precisely, thereby preventing similar tragedies.

             Robertson's vision was channeled into the development of NxOpinion (Nx is short for "Next"), a real-time diagnostic tool built on Microsoft technology and with assistance from Microsoft Research that promises to provide physicians with timely and relevant information about hundreds of non-chronic illnesses and diseases. Robertson's non-profit Robertson Research Institute (RRI), which he created in February 2001, intends to offer NxOpinion at no cost to doctors and medical organizations in locations where this sort of resource is most required, including as disadvantaged and developing countries, as well as rural clinics. In 2005, an initial version of the program and related database of medical information will be released.

             NxOpinion, which is designed for usage on a Tablet PC or desktop computer, invites a physician to enter facts regarding a patient's condition as though explaining the case to a colleague. NxOpinion proposes plausible diseases and requests further proof based on each new piece of information. Using Microsoft Windows Forms technology, we were able to create an extraordinarily rich and engaging interface that provides information to the user on a single screen. Another RRI team of physicians and researchers is working to populate the NxOpinion medical knowledge base with illness profiles based on the most recent data from major medical publications and a variety of other sources.

            This occurs in the NxOpinion Content Creator, a companion program that organizes, stores, and delivers content using a Microsoft SQL Server database. Each illness profile will comprise information such as typical symptoms, frequency with which they emerge, and the kind of test findings connected with that sickness, with the RRI medica assigning a weighting to each piece of information. As a result, RRI anticipates that future phases of NxOpinion will be a highly successful teaching resource for medical students, interns, and residents. In November 2003, the development team put NxOpinion's usability to the test by inviting a group of twelve doctors in the Dominican Republic to try with the diagnostic application and submit comments over the course of three days.