Bayes, Medical Diagnostics, and Nomograms, What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

Modern medicine makes extensive use of high technology. On the other hand, medical decision making is still rather opaque from the patient's point of view. We propose a protocol that uses Bayes' Theorem to incorporate diagnostic tests in a way that can be easily explained to patients. As part of this protocol, we show how nomograms can be used not only to perform the relevant calculations, but to better communicate the process to the patient.

Speaker: Joe Marasco