Disease vocabulary size as a surrogate marker for physicians' disease knowledge volume.

Journal: PloS one
Published Date:

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Recognizing what physicians know and do not know about a particular disease is one of the keys to designing clinical decision support systems, since these systems can fulfill complementary role by recognizing this boundary. To our knowledge, however, no study has attempted to quantify how many diseases physicians actually know and thus the boundary is unclear. This study explores a method to solve this problem by investigating whether the vocabulary assessment techniques developed in the linguistics field can be applied to assess physicians' knowledge.

Authors

  • Hiroaki Tanaka
  • Kazuhiro Ueda
    Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Satoshi Watanuki
    Tokyo Metropolitan Tama Medical Center, Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Takashi Watari
    General Medicine Center Shimane University Hospital Izumo Shimane Japan.
  • Yasuharu Tokuda
    Japan Community Health Care Organization, Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Takashi Okumura
    Kitami Institute of Technology, Kitami, Hokkaido, Japan.