It is fairly common that a physician sees a patient and has no access to that person’s prior medical records.  A diagnosis has to be based on the symptoms the patient describes.  Researchers at the University of Washington, MIT, and Columbia University, however, have devised a predictive algorithm that compares those symptoms to other patients presenting the same conditions and then calculates a likely course of events. This piece has a link to the Annals of Applied Statistics article “Bayesian Hierarchical Rule Modeling for Predictive Medical Conditions.”  MORE