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Medical consulting and diagnosis is not just a matter of storage and retrieval of information or of computing the a posteriori probability of disease. A physician must interact with numerous components of the health care team such as a nurse who may communicate his orders for tests or drugs, the physician consultant who advises him, and a textbook or literature which provides him with information about diseases. The creation of a physician through the medical school process causes the build-up of thought processes in the physician orientated both to consulting and decision making. This thought process is not an accidental one but it is dictated by the interrelationship of the components of the health care team. It is during the building of this thought process, in medical school, that computer assistance to medical consulting and diagnosis has a good chance of becoming part of the physician's "bag of tricks". In addition, computer assistance in medical consulting and diagnosis can be an aid to education during medical school.