Patent ID: 7742932

Claim:
A method of assisting in the diagnosis of a patient in need thereof, said method comprising the steps of: (a) providing, in a physical computing device, a set of candidate diseases and associated initial parameters representing estimated probabilities of said candidate diseases; (b) receiving, in said computing device, a patient transmission history for said patient being diagnosed, said patient transmission history comprising information about the presence or absence of disease in one or more family members or others nearby; (c) fractionating said patient transmission history into a plurality of forms of transmission, using said computing device, wherein said fractionating comprises determining whether there is evidence for each of said plurality of forms of transmission being present or absent in said patient transmission history, and wherein at least one of said plurality of forms of transmission is a genetic form of transmission; (d) using said computing device to iteratively modify said initial parameters representing estimated probabilities of said candidate diseases, using the information obtained from said fractionating of said patient transmission history into each of said plurality of forms of transmission, to obtain modified parameters representing modified estimated probabilities of said candidate diseases; and (e) outputting a list capable of being displayed, said list comprising one or more of said candidate diseases having highest said modified estimated probabilities.