In a collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the researchers will next test the tool’s ability to ​triage patients in emergency department waiting rooms.

Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Edmund Klamann

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. [...] Oct 22 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O) researchers say an AI tool that diagnoses patients step by step, as doctors do, was more than twice as accurate as general physicians at solving complex medical ​cases, according to a study published on Thursday in Science. [...] The tool also outperformed human physicians when presented with scenarios drawn from a major database of emergency room admissions.

Assessments comparing these types of older systems to human doctors usually use multiple-choice questions, the researchers said.

"AI has become very good at getting a 100% ​pass rate on those,” ​said Dr. Dominic King, ⁠the corporate vice president of the health unit at Microsoft AI, whose team is developing the new technology.