Algorithm (medical)

A medical algorithm is any algorithm, i.e. a way of doing a computation, formula, look-up table, nomogram, etc., which is useful in health care or medicine. Medical algorithms are part of a broader field which is usually fit under the aims of medical informatics and medical decision making. Medical decisions occur in several areas of medical activity such as medical test selection, diagnosis, therapy and prognosis, automatic control of medical equipments and so forth.

Examples of medical algorithms are:

• Calculators. E.g.: an on-line or stand-alone calculator for body mass index (BMI) when stature and body weight are given;
• Decision flowcharts. E.g.: a binary decision tree for deciding what is the etiology of chest pain
• Look-up table. E.g., for looking up calories and nutritional contents of foodstuffs
• Nomograph. E.g.: a moving circular slide to calculate body surface area or drug dosages.

In relation to logic-based and artificial neural network-based medical expert systems, which are also computer applications to the medical decision making field, algorithms are less complex in architecture, data structure and user interface. Medical algorithms are not necessarily implemented using digital computers. In fact, many of them can be represented on paper, in the form of diagrams, nomographs, etc.

Related topics

• Medical decision making
• Evidence-based medicine
• Consensus (medical)
• Guideline (medical)

External link

• The Medical Algorithms Project