A Reproducible Method for Grading Inferred Clinical Findings
Deserke Engineering
Engineering Team
Deserke Engineering
1 min read
Published July 20, 2026
- DOI
- 10.5555/deserke.2026.0031
- Keywords
- epistemic grading, clinical evidence, inter-rater reliability
- Citation
- Deserke Research (2026). A Reproducible Method for Grading Inferred Clinical Findings. Internal Publication.
Abstract
We present a reproducible six-level grading methodology for clinical findings derived partly or wholly from inference rather than direct observation, and report inter-rater reliability across three methodology revisions.
Grading a finding as Observed, Derived, Inferred, Probable, Possible, or Unknown sounds simple until two reviewers disagree on the same chart.
Our first methodology produced 78% inter-rater agreement. The current revision, published here, reaches 94% on the same validation set.
The largest single improvement came from separating 'confidence in the underlying data' from 'confidence in the inference drawn from it' — two questions our first draft conflated into one score.
About the author
Deserke Engineering
Engineering Team
Deserke Engineering