What is Computer Assisted Diagnosis (CAD)

Health care costs worldwide are increasing because of new medicines, new techniques, and more expensive and extensive research on diseases. It is essential that health care delivery systems be implemented which take advantage of these advances in a cost effective economic manner. One critical aspect of the health care delivery system is the improvement in diagnosis of disease. This paper emphasizes diagnosis and the need to collect key patient information “pivotal information” at the earliest possible point in the patient's disease process, and put such pivotal information in physicians' hands. There is a potential for huge benefits in cost savings and greater effectiveness of treatment from these actions, but challenges must be overcome to realize their full benefits. The major problems include (1) market incentives in the current health care system which fails to encourage collecting pivotal medical information as early as possible (2) physician resistance to some of these ideas and (3) technical and ethical problems that remain to be solved.