If TV's Dr. House, diagnostician extraordinaire, is ever truly stumped, he can refer his patient to the National Institutes of Health's new "Undiagnosed Diseases Program."

Health care providers will refer patients whose symptoms do not fit any known pattern, and the agency will invite some of them for a work-up at the NIH's Clinical Center in Bethesda. After examinations by dozens of medical specialists, patients might be enrolled in one of the existing 1,500 ongoing clinical trials or perhaps inspire a new investigation. In addition to attempting to diagnose the undiagnosable, the program will also identify subtypes of more common illnesses, leading to a "catalog of descriptions of conditions – a phenotype atlas that will provide new information for textbook diagnoses," said William A. Gahl, MD, PhD clinical director at the National Human Genome Research Institute, who was one of a panel of speakers at a telephone news conference today announcing the program.