Demographic information about a specific subset of patients can help physicians recognize conditions they do not expect to find in the larger population.
The WHO Clinical Staging System for HIV/AIDS allows physicians in resource-limited settings to make clinical decisions based on patient clinical features instead of laboratory tests.
When recruiting physicians from developing countries for U.S. residency training slots there are ethical concerns that program directors and potential residents should be aware of and discuss.
Clinical decision making calls for use of both explicit and tacit knowledge despite evidence-based medicine's assumption that explicit information is sufficient.