Diagnosis background

GIDEON Diagnosis is a computer driven Bayesian matrix for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. It includes virtually all of mankind's major and minor infectious diseases. In some cases, generic diseases are subdivided for statistical reasons: e.g., herpes simplex infection and herpes simplex encephalitis are considered separately by GIDEON. In other cases, diseases are grouped for lack of sufficient discriminative data to allow for meaningful computer diagnosis. Thus, the designations "Pneumonia - bacterial," "Meningitis-bacterial," and "Septicemia" each represent a wide variety of diseases and pathogens.

GIDEON does not include a number of self-defined and obvious infectious diseases, e.g., otitis externa, simple warts, laryngitis, etc. Similarly, GIDEON excludes certain slow-viral and retroviral diseases that do not present as clinical "infection" problems, e.g., subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, Helicobacter gastritis, kuru, and tropical spastic paraparesis.

The literally hundreds of sporadic single-case reports depicting infection or infestation by a growing list of exotic agents are also beyond the scope of this application.