Patent ID: 7418399

Claim:
A method for the construction and utilization of a medical records system, comprising: collecting epidemiological information of female persons having or previously having a urinary tract infection, wherein the epidemiological information includes identifications of bacterial pathogens, treatment antimicrobials, and antimicrobial efficacy; entering and storing the collected epidemiological information in an electronic database, the database including a record of a plurality of different types of bacterial pathogens known for causing urinary tract infections, antimicrobials used for treating the urinary tract infections, and treatment efficacy of the antimicrobials; creating an automated knowledge discovery system, including organizing the epidemiological information in the electronic database to make the epidemiological information amenable to data mining; receiving through a query function of the database patient epidemiological information from a patient having a urinary tract infection, the patient epidemiological information including at least one symptom of the patient and demographic and personal information for the patient; automatically predicting with the knowledge discovery system a bacterial pathogen causing the patient's urinary tract infection from the plurality of different types of bacterial pathogens known for causing urinary tract infections 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; automatically predicting with the knowledge discovery system an antimicrobial treatment for the patient based on the bacterial pathogen prediction of the data mining; and automatically issuing to a medical practitioner treating the patient a report including the antimicrobial treatment for the patient based on the bacterial pathogen prediction.