Abstract
Computer technology can benefit medical diagnosis in two respects: i) as a diagnostic aid for the physician, i.e., computer-aided diagnosis, or ii) as a simulation device for the study of diagnostic reasoning, i.e., computer-simulated medical diagnosis. This presentation clarifies the distinction between these two applications and their relationship to a number of research paradigms in the study of human thinking, namely decision-making, judgment, and problem solving. It is argued that research aimed at improving medical diagnosis by means of computer-aided computations may not necessarily reproduce the steps in the reasoning process of the physician, which is the proper study of computer-simulated diagnosis.
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Selected References
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