A Method and Knowledge Base for Automated Inference of Patient Problems from Structured Data in an Electronic Medical Record

Having a clear picture of a patient's problems and diagnoses is critical for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, knowledge of a patient's problems facilitates optimal clinical decision making-without understanding the full scope of patients' clinical issues, it is very difficult to take good care of them. However, knowledge of problems is also critical for a variety of other activities, such as clinical decision support, [1] quality improvement and measurement, and research.