System and Method for Crowdsourcing Biological Specimen Identification

摘要

A system and method for crowdsourcing medical diagnosis that includes a caregiver taking a biological specimen from a patient, making a microscope slide with the specimen, photographing the image and transmitting it, including personal and demographic information related to the patient, to a remote computer, where the data is stored in a database for crowdsourced analysis, collecting the opinions of the individuals forming the crowdsource, weighting the opinions based upon qualifications of the individuals, and developing a pooled diagnosis based a parameter, such as frequency of a diagnosis occurring in the crowd of individuals, and transmitting the diagnosis to the caregiver, for prescribing medication, a therapy or further medical tests.

主权项

1. A process for remotely identifying a biological specimen for determining a medical diagnosis comprising: (1) assembling a print-and-fold microscope; (2) forming an image through the print-and-fold microscope from a microscope slide containing a bodily specimen of a patient; (3) electronically capturing the image; (4) transmitting the image and information related to the patient to a remote processor for storage; (5) using program code executed by the processor for connecting a first database having the image and information stored thereon to one or more devices for identification of the specimen based on morphological characteristics and microbial invasion(s); (6) using program code executed by a processor for collecting one or more diagnostic opinion of the identification of morphological characteristics and microbial invasion(s) of the bodily specimen which opinions are quantified using one of a nominal scale, ordinal scale, or ratio scale, which is stored in a second database; (7) using program code executed by a processor for calculating a qualification weight of each diagnostic opinion stored in a third database, based on each identification of a prior specimen when compared, using program code executed by a processor, to a standard; (8) using program code executed by a processor for calculating a weighted frequency of the identification of the specimen by applying the qualification weight to each identification stored in a fourth database; (9) weighting the saliency of each selected diagnosis based on (a) a maximum occurrence, (b) a median occurrence or (c) a mode occurrence of the identification of the specimen; (10) storing the diagnosis of the specimen in a fifth database; and (11) transmitting to a caregiver the identification of the specimen and diagnosis and one or more of a prescription drug, a therapy or medical test to one of a smartphone or computer having a display.