Diagnostic Games, a Tool for Clinical Experience Formalization in Interactive "Physician--IT-specialist" Framework

The specific characteristics of data processing in clinical decision problems require special approaches. This was the insight that made Izrail Gelfand and his colleagues look for new methods of formalization that would allow to discover the intrinsic structures in clinical data. A special technique for collaborative work of IT specialists and physicians named "diagnostic games" (DG) was developed for this purpose. This approach including the DG and related ideas of an "adequate language" and "structural units" is presented in this paper. The preliminary setting of clinical decision problem of surgical timing in patients with ruptured subarachnoid aneurysm is introduced as a subject for further formalization.