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Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

symptoma.com

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Re: Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

#21
Ok.

I tried with symptoms just "running nose" and answering no to all following questions (BTW quite a few about abdominal pain and diarrhea and none about coughing).

#1 answer was "Upper Respiratory Infection" and #2 "Common Cold" (good), but among the 30 results there are "Mustard Gas Poisoning" and "Stevens-Johnson Syndrome".

It seems like it ignored (absence of) fever, did not ask anything "around" the symptom (like sore throat/coughing) and returned anything containing "rhinorrea".

Re: Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

#23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SPARQL I've heard of, but what are OWL and RDF exactly? As for SPARQL, I know of it's association with Wikimedia data, but I'm guessing you're thinking of data sources other than Wikipedia? Edit - Ah... https://www.w3.org/OWL/

SPARQL works on any RDF data, so if you have a bunch of RDF data in RDF files you can use jena's command line utilities to query it. RDF is a technology for encoding semantic tripple graphs, basically a set of {object_id}-{property_id}-{value} - where value can be literal or an identifier. OWL is a way to specify types and classes for RDF data, and relationships between them. SPARQL is a way to query RDF data. So you…

Appreciate the answer. It's an interesting domain. I've only just started learning about, tbh.

Re: Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SPARQL works on any RDF data, so if you have a bunch of RDF data in RDF files you can use jena's command line utilities to query it. RDF is a technology for encoding semantic tripple graphs, basically a set of {object_id}-{property_id}-{value} - where value can be literal or an identifier. OWL is a way to specify types and classes for RDF data, and relationships between them. SPARQL is a way to query RDF data. So you…

Appreciate the answer. It's an interesting domain. I've only just started learning about, tbh.

Awareness of Semantic Web Technology is in general way below what it should be I think given that it solves important problems and there is nothing that solves similar problems being used, instead people just don't really address the problems that Semantic Web Technology solves.

If you are interested in learning more check out: https://gitter.im/linkeddata/chat

Re: Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

#25
post #18

It correctly diagnosed appendicitis and also gave me an interesting differential. It did not correctly identify acute myocardial infarction and probable COVID-19 infection, but they were in the differential. The software needs to be better at taking medical history. It doesn't try to figure out the symptoms. I input abdominal pain and instead of asking where it hurts and what the pain feels like it asked me if I have…

You can look up the words you don't understand. Would be cool if you could do an ultrasound using your mobile.

> You can look up the words you don't understand.

The software could also simply ask the right questions. That way patients would not have to learn medicine in order to diagnose themselves.

> Would be cool if you could do an ultrasound using your mobile.

I agree, it would be amazing. Though it should be noted that ultrasonography is operator-dependent. Unlike other imaging technologies, it takes operator skill to find the anatomical structures with the wand.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3711733/

So I don't think users with no training would be able to effectively operate a mobile ultrasound.

Re: Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

#29
It was fine until it started asking me questions like these that are clearly for medical professionals

Is there enlargement of the spleen?

Do you already have laboratory results, for example from a blood count?

Is there enlargement of the liver?

Is there generalized Lymphadenopathy?

Hang on let me go check how large my liver and spleen are.

Re: Symptoma – Digital health assistant and symptom checker

#30
post #9

I put in the following symptoms: > dry cough, fever, aching limbs The first result is "Sacoidosis" "Common cold" is the 4th result. Sarcoidosis is around 25k cases per year in the US. Common cold is some hundreds of million cases in the US per year (on average an adult has 2 - 3 cases per year alone, children even more). This is dangerous. People will misinterpret the result ordering - esp. as the page tells me it ha…

Not sure now - But at some point Symptoma was being marketed as a tool for physicians. In that context, I think this would be a very helpful tool.
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