Reams of research point to the same finding: physicians looking at the same thing will disagree with each other, or even with themselves, from 10 percent to 50 percent of the time during virtually every aspect of the medical-care process from taking a medical history to doing a physical examination, reading a laboratory test, performing a pathological diagnosis and recommending a treatment.

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The team is lead by Professor Atta Badii of the Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory at the University of Reading in the UK and has 19 specialists working on Hector.

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After reading online about genetic research, Ms. Dewey-Hagborg joined Genspace, a New York genetics laboratory, and brought samples she found on Brooklyn streets into the lab for DNA extraction.

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