The background of INTERNIST I and QMR

Abstract

During my tenure as Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, 1955 to 1970, two points became clear in regard to diagnosis in internal medicine. The first was that the knowledge base in that field had become vastly too large for any single person to encompass it. The second point was that the busy practitioner, even though he knew the items of information pertinent to his patients correct diagnosis, often did not consider the right answer particularly if the diagnosis was an unusual disease.