A method and apparatus for automatic disease state diagnosis

A diagnostic device arranged to prompt a clinician to input diagnostic information for a patient and further arranged to automatically present a diagnosis to the clinician, the diagnostic device including:

• an electronic memory storing instructions comprising a diagnostic application software product including a plurality of diagnostic models derived from investigation of pneumonia-positive and non-pneumonia subjects;
• an electronic processor in communication with the electronic memory for executing the instructions;
• a user interface responsive to the electronic processor for the processor to prompt for and receive the diagnostic information;
• wherein the processor is configured by the diagnostic application in use to present a diagnosis of the patient with the user interface by applying the diagnostic information to at least one of said diagnostic models.

A method of automatically diagnosing pneumonia in a patient comprising:

• using an input/output interface device to obtain values of two or more diagnostic parameters of the patient from a carer for the patient;
• said diagnostic parameters comprising:
• breathing rate, existence of fever, existence of runny nose, number of days with runny nose, number of days with cough, existence of chest indrawing, temperature, BMI (body mass index), and oxygen saturation level;
• using a processor device operatively coupled to the input/output interface to apply the two or more diagnostic parameters to an electronic memory storing a plurality of precompiled pneumonia diagnostic models to thereby identify an optimal diagnostic model of said plurality;
• applying the values of the two or more diagnostic parameters to the identified optimal diagnostic model to generate a diagnosis output from the diagnostic model;
• and
• operating the input/output interface device in accordance with the diagnosis output to indicate presence or absence of pneumonia in the patient to the carer, for use by the carer in providing care to the patient;
• wherein the pneumonia diagnostic models are derived from investigation of a population of pneumonia positive patients and non-pneumonia positive subjects.