Use of the Computer Program GIDEON at an Inpatient Infectious Diseases Consultation Service

GIDEON is a subscription-only computer program that constructs a differential diagnosis, ranked in order of percent probability, on the basis of clinical data entered by the user for >300 infectious diseases. A significant number of consults at our hospital address problems that stem not only from purely infectious causes, but from other factors as well, including surgical complications, medication effects, and social factors, such as injection drug use. However, if clinical judgment is needed to select which data are relevant, if the costs of subscription are prohibitively high, and if infectious diseases teams at major hospitals are unable to utilize these programs effectively, then the optimal place for computerized diagnostic programs such as GIDEON appears to be in other medical settings.