A goal-directed approach to disease classification

Abstract

Disease classification plays an important role in numerous medical goals, from improving communication between researchers, physicians, and insurers to diagnosis and therapeutic prediction. Therefore, it's important to understand the principles behind our classificatory practices with a view to adopting the approach to disease classification that best serves the practical interests of medical science. In this paper, I discuss three prominent approaches to disease classification: the etiological approach, symptom-based approach, and pathophysiological approach, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each. My main goal is to defend a pragmatic goal-directed approach to disease classification. I argue that choices about which classificatory approach to use should principally depend on the medical goal being pursued. Drawing from existing pragmatic accounts of classification in science, I suggest that the goal in question determines what kind of information about a disease is important and this, in turn, determines which classificatory approach to apply in service of that goal.