How are signs, symptoms and laboratory tests selected for inclusion in GIDEON?
Signs and symptoms incorporated in GIDEON are those generally used by specialists in the field. Most are easy to assess, and discriminative in the consideration or elimination of large groups of individual diseases. Similarly, the phenotypic tests listed in the Microbiology module are useful in the identification of large subgroups of bacteria, or the identification of individual major taxa. For example, one of our users asked, ‘Why is yellow pigment included, but not red pigment?’ The presence or absence of yellow pigment is extremely important in the identification of major human pathogens; while red color is limited to only a few minor taxa. In addition to these considerations, one must realize that each symptom or phenotypic test occupies an extremely long column in one of the GIDEON spread sheets – with additional concerns of computer space, speed, etc.
