Electronic-Brain Medical Erudite: its past, present, and future.

Electronic-Brain Medical Erudite (EBME) is a large medical consultation system. Its core is the Enormous Knowledge Base of Disease Diagnosis Criteria (EKBDDC), which contains diagnostic criteria of 1,001 diagnostic entities and describes nearly 4,000 items of diagnostic indicators. EBME was implemented initially on a low-cost popular microcomputer, written in BASIC. This system can aid in the prompting of typical diseases and the teaching of diagnosis. We have performed a preliminary evaluation of EBME. Its performance on a series of trials with a total of 815 cases appeared qualitatively similar to that of the hospital clinicians. The diagnostic accordance rates were 89.7, 89.4, and 85% respectively. Recently, it is being transferred to a 386 microcomputer with a relational database, FoxBASE PLUS. This system will be improved, expanded, and connected with international medical information systems.