A diagnostic expert system for structured reports, quality assessment, and training of residents in sonography.

Background: The quality of medical reports on diagnostic procedures has a considerable impact on the quality of medical care. Handwritten or otherwise unstructured reports tend to be incomplete, whereas structured questionnaires are of limited flexibility and not considered case-adequate. Thus, medical reports of this kind may promote an incomplete and misleading documentation and, therefore, be problematic with respect to their reliability.

Methods: SonoConsult (SC), an expert system for structured and case-adequate documentation of sonographic findings with an additional diagnostic component, was evaluated with respect to user acceptance and suitability for enhancing the quality of reports and supporting sonographic beginners. The expectations and the attitudes of the users toward the program were evaluated by anonymous questionnaires. The documentation of findings and the diagnostic conclusions in 103 free text reports made by experienced examiners were evaluated by subjecting their information to a subsequent input into SC. Free text reports were checked for information that was asked by SC but not mentioned in the reports. In a series of 150 cases, the system diagnoses were blinded during input of findings into SC-questionnaires and the examiners' diagnostic conclusions were compared with the uncovered SC-diagnoses with respect to forgotten diagnoses.

Results: The structured and data-driven acquisition of information by the program was well accepted by the users. However, only a medium interest in the system-delivered diagnoses was noted. The program-generated reports were characterized by a more detailed description of the findings and a higher number of diagnoses in comparison to the unstructured reports before introduction of SC as the only documentation system. When unaware of the system diagnoses, information was entered into the questionnaires, and SC generated some diagnoses which were not mentioned by the examiners in their conclusions. The possibility to inspect the system diagnoses led to an enhancement of the number of diagnoses the examiners mentioned in their conclusions. By contrast, the examiners meant that the influence of the program on their conclusions was minimal or dispensable. Beginners in sonography acknowledged that the program led them to perform a complete examination in an adequate sequence.

Conclusion: An expert system for the data-driven, case-adequate information acquisition of abdominal ultrasound examinations may enhance the quality of the reports and, potentially, of the examinations at the same time. In addition, it may help beginners to learn a structured problem- and finding-adequate examination sequence.