Comparison of Physician and Computer Diagnostic Accuracy

Across physicians, they were more likely to list the correct diagnosis first for high-acuity vignettes (vs low-acuity vignettes) and for uncommon vignettes (vs common vignettes).In contrast, symptom checkers were more likely to list the correct diagnosis first for low-acuity vignettes and common vignettes (Table 2).Discussion | In what we believe to be the first direct comparison of diagnostic accuracy, physicians vastly outperformed computer algorithms in diagnostic accuracy (84.3% vs 51.2% correct diagnosis in the top 3 listed). 4Despite physicians' superior performance, they provided the incorrect diagnosis in about 15% of cases, similar to prior estimates (10%-15%) for physician diagnostic error. 5While in this project we compared diagnostic performance, future work should test whether computer algorithms can augment physician diagnostic accuracy. 6ey limitations included our use of clinical vignettes, which likely do not reflect the complexity of real-world patients and did not include physical examination or test results.Physicians who chose to use Human Dx may not be a representative sample of US physicians and therefore may differ in diagnostic accuracy.Symptom checkers are only 1 form of computer diagnostic tools, and other tools may have superior performance.