Computer Assisted Medical Problem Solving

These programs would be excellent additions to a medical school physiology course, either integrated into the curriculum or made available as an additional teaching aid to interested students. They use the full potential of computers as an educational tool and offer another important means of teaching crucial topics students often find difficult. One disk for the IBM PC/ XT/AT. No price. Medical students must make a critical cognitive transition from the formal, well-organized lecture, typical of the earlier years of medical school, to the more complicated, less organized environment of the wards. Furthermore, the student must acquire a feel for the economic obstacles which limit the diagnostic tests or therapy desired by the clinician. At present, there is little help available for the medical student struggling with either of these problems. Computer Assisted Medical Problem Solving (CAMPS) is an authoring system which allows clinical faculty to create medical simulations for teaching clinical problem solving to medical students. The clinician begins by filling in the necessary details about a real or fictional case to the computer. Then the medical student uncovers these details in a computer-simulated workup by judiciously choosing the various sources of information or tests that he or she thinks will be most helpful in reaching a diagnosis. When the student has enough confidence to proffer a diagnosis, the program responds by confirming or rejecting it. The program computes the patient's bill, detailing the costs of the initial visit, laboratory tests, consulting fees, and prescribed therapy. It also quantitatively scores the student's performance. A brief written review of the disease follows, including a summary of the best choices for diagnostic tests, the proper therapy for the disease, and a primary reference for further information. The sample simulation was quite remarkable in many respects. The history offered by the patient's parents included a few comments that were extremely helpful, many that were incidental, and some that were outright misleading. The array of diagnostic modalities and therapies available to the student numbered close to 400, ranging from simple blood and urine tests to chromosomal analyses for family members and heart catheterizations. The laboratory tests took "time" in the sense that the results were pending until the initial workup was finished. When a lab result was reported, the price of the test was also included. The note accompanying the disk explained that the particular case, a thirteen-month-old infant with cystic fibrosis, took …