The What is it? study aimed to collect data to build an online STI self-diagnosis tool. The tool would provide probability based indications of the most likely sexually transmissible infections (STIs) or other genital conditions.
We created a questionnaire and included clinical images and diagrams. Symptomatic individuals attending Melbourne Sexual Health Centre were asked to participate in this research project. There were 5,240 men and 3,078 women who completed the questionnaire in 2015 and 2016.
Participants answered questions and selected specific images which they felt matched their current symptoms. Once clients had completed the questionnaire, they had a consultation with an experienced sexual health clinician. The clinician made a clinical diagnosis without any knowledge of the answers to the What Is It? questionnaire.
The questionnaire responses were then matched to actual clinical diagnoses. We used this data to develop a self-diagnostic mathematical algorithm. MSHC partnered with a team from the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University to develop a predictive algorithm.
The resultant Bayesian network (BN) model used the What is it? questionnaire responses along with routinely collected demographic and epidemiological data to predict the likely diagnosis, using the clinical diagnosis made by the doctor as the gold standard. The website was designed, branded as iSpySTI, at www.ispysti.org, and launched in October 2017.