Chat interfaces

The SimulConsult Diagnostic Dashboard is very powerful.

It supports the three cognitive modes of diagnosis:

  • Combining several findings to get a differential diagnosis
  • Workups for particular findings and for particular specialties
  • Considering a common disease and generating a differential diagnosis for similar diseases based on which findings are present or absent.

It has an explainability feature, notably absent in the AI Large Language Models, and when these try to simulate explainability, that often introduces the cognitive error of “premature closure” on the most likely diagnosis.

It has a “rule in / rule out” mode for focusing on particular diseases in the differential diagnosis.

However, the power of all these capabilities adds complexity. Hospital-based clinicians and specialists value the power, but many primary care clinicians have asked for a simpler interface that focuses on their needs. Accordingly, we have introduced two chat-based interfaces, which use the same diagnostic reasoning as the Dashboard, but have a more directed text-based chat interface. There are brochures for these:

The output of these chat programs is made available to the user of the Dashboard, allowing a team approach that includes both patients and primary care clinicians.