Diagnosis of rheumatic disease: a plea for contemplation of the future.

In clinical practice the definition of diagnosis is far from clear, since different levels of diagnosis are employed from the symptomatic to the pathological and aetiological. The recent development of computer data bases has important implications for the future, but will require a great deal of thought regarding the nature and quality of the data to be used. Evolution of diagnosis has occurred gradually during the history of medicine. As we see it, computer-assisted data handling will have a profound effect on diagnosis and classification of disease. To meet this challenge we require to define our terms regarding diagnosis of rheumatic disorders. In this paper we comment on the state of the art of diagnosis and classification of rheumatic diseases, and then propose changes to meet the needs of future developments.