Margarita Vladimirovna Zhilinskaya — pediatrician and scientist (on the 100th anniversary of her birth)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the life and scientific career of Margarita Vladimirovna Zhilinskaya, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, head of the first department of computer diagnostics in pediatrics in Russia and the USSR created in 1970 on her initiative. For 5 years before that, she was the Chief Freelance Pediatrician of the Ministry of Health of the RSFSR. The new area of activity was a continuation of research on the application of mathematical methods in clinical work. The department actively developed and implemented methods for planning research, assessing the informativeness of signs, multiple connections of signs in the analysis of the pathogenesis of diseases, for which the method of correlation pleiades was developed. The main paradigm in as early as the beginning of the department’s activity was a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the conditions of the child’s organism, mathematical analysis of risk factors and the formation of risk groups for diseases in children on this basis. At the same time, computer programs were created for differential diagnosis and evaluation of treatment effectiveness. Employees of the department conducted comprehensive research in the field of developing computer systems for rapid and in-depth analysis of infant mortality. For the first time, a mathematical apparatus was implemented to quantify the contribution of qualitative characteristics to the outcome of the disease. Research conducted under the scientific guidance of M.V. Zhilinskaya in 1970–1979 laid the ground for the subsequent creation of an automated system for clinical examination of pediatric population and numerous systems for disease diagnosing.