Patent ID: 7627489

Claim:
A method for the construction and utilization of a medical records system, comprising: collecting prior epidemiological information of persons previously having symptoms of a heterogeneous infectious disease, the prior epidemiological information including a record of a plurality of different types of pathogens known for causing the disease, antimicrobials used for treating the disease, and treatment efficacy of the antimicrobials; entering and storing the collected prior epidemiological information in an electronic database; creating an automated knowledge discovery system including organizing the prior epidemiological information in the electronic database to make the prior epidemiological information amenable to data mining; receiving patient epidemiological information of a patient diagnosed as having or suspected of having the heterogeneous infectious disease into a query function of the database; automatically predicting a specific pathogen infecting the patient from the plurality of different types of pathogens known for causing the disease by data mining the organized epidemiological information as a function of similarities of the patient epidemiological information with the organized epidemiological information and without first performing a diagnostic test on a sample from the patient; and prescribing a course of treatment to the patient based on the prediction of the data mining.