2.3. Study Interventions
DISEASE, DISEASES
In the study intervention group arm, an artificial intelligence-based medical interview-assistance system was used. This system alternates question selection and selects relevant diseases by a flowchart model of symptoms and diseases based on information from tens of thousands of medical reports (Ubie, Inc., Tokyo, Japan). The system was provided as a question flow chart-type application. The artificial intelligence-based medical interview system examined in the present study uses a proprietary algorithm based on a Bayesian model for data analysis. The system allowed patients to select categorical answers to natural language question statements, and the resulting categorical variables were analyzed as data. Following the flow chart, the program asks the user appropriate and relevant questions according to the answers from the patient as the user. A patient inputs information, such as his/her chief complaint, symptoms, and medical history prior to the interview for about 20 questions presented on a tablet. As the interview progressed, candidates for diseases with a certain degree of relevance were selected by the system. Then, questions highly relevant to the selected possible disease were selected. The artificial intelligence-based medical interview-assistance system selected questions according to the entered information, and when all questions were completed, the entered information was converted into a general medical chart format and displayed with a list of the 10 most relevant diseases. The resident physician in the intervention group viewed the printed output screen from the artificial intelligence-based medical interview support system during the medical interview. The obtained information was a document similar to a medical chart compiled by the artificial intelligence-based support system based on the medical inquiry about the disease and the medical history of the simulated patient entered by the researchers in advance. The resident physicians of the intervention group conducted their medical interviews with reference to these documents. The time allowed for medical interviews was limited to a maximum of 10 min. The resident physicians listed three differential diagnoses based on the information from the system and the information they obtained from the medical interview they conducted within the time limit. The items presented in the outcome section were compared between the intervention group and the control group.In the control arm, the resident physicians conducted the interview without use of the artificial intelligence-based medical interview-assistance system, and they performed a usual medical interview of the simulated patient. The time allowed for each medical interview was limited to a maximum of 10 min. The resident physicians were asked to list three differential diagnoses based on only the information they obtained from the medical interview they conducted within the time limit. The experiment was conducted twice, with one set as follows: 10 resident physicians each interviewing 10 simulated patients and providing their diagnoses.