2026-09-28T11:48:19Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27817 2026-09-28T06:35:12Z ddc:004 open_access

Dissecting NetDoktor’s Online Questionnaire with Entropy, Tree Simplification & Logical Abduction Perko, Alexander Mujić, Emir Wotawa, Franz Medical Questionnaire Diagnosis Abductive Reasoning Information Entropy Medical diagnosis and its accuracy are dependent on the available information. Hence, it is in the interest of both the patient and the doctor to provide the necessary information and ask the right questions in an efficient manner. The same can be said about medical questionnaires, which resemble the conversation during a doctor’s appointment. NetDoktor’s SymptomChecker is a freely accessible, expert-curated questionnaire in the German language. It can be traversed like a large decision tree, linking symptoms to diseases. However, does it find an optimal conversation path to acquire the necessary information from its users? Here, our study surfaces structural deficiencies and ways to optimise the questionnaire paths. In particular, we model the process of acquiring information and refining prognoses as an abductive reasoning problem and provide a corresponding algorithm. In our experiments, we apply simple tree transformations and optimisations, building upon Shannon’s information entropy to expose redundant subtrees and inefficient question order. Our results contribute to a better understanding of medical questionnaires and open the door for future applications of the data provided by NetDoktor. Because SymptomChecker is validated by medical professionals, it is a prime candidate to serve as a reference for benchmarking other systems. For instance, a dataset derived from SymptomChecker can be used for testing systems such as large language models in the task of medical diagnosis. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Alexander Perko and Emir Mujić and Franz Wotawa 2026 Is Part Of OASIcs, Volume 148, 37th International Conference on Principles of Diagnosis and Resilient Systems (DX 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/OASIcs.DX.2026.3 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-278173 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.DX.2026.3 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode