A method useful for facilitating choosing a treatment or treatment regime and for predicting the outcome of a treatment for a disorder which is diagnosed and monitored by a physician or other appropriately trained and licensed professional, such as for example, a psychologist, based upon the symptoms experienced by a patient. Unipolar depression is an example of such a disorder, however the model may find use with other disorders and conditions wherein the
patient response to treatment is variable. In the preferred embodiment, the method for predicting
patient response includes the steps of performing at least one measurement of a symptom on a patient and measuring that symptom so as to derive a baseline
patient profile, such as for example, determining the symptom profile with time; defining a set of a plurality of predictor variables which define the data of the baseline
patient profile, wherein the set of predictor variables includes predictive symptoms and a set of
treatment options; deriving a model that represents the relationship between
patient response and the set of predictor variables; and utilizing the model to predict the response of said patient to a treatment. A
neural net architecture is utilized to define a non-linear, second order model which is utilized to analyze the
patient data and generate the predictive
database from entered
patient data.