A hospital for undiagnosed diseases will soon open in the U.S. city of Bethesda, the Nature News web site reports. The programme has been launched by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is meant both to help individual patients and to advance

The hospital will employ a number of doctors with a wide range of specialities. This will help sharing of expertise when dealing with puzzling cases and could finally provide a long-awaited diagnosis for patients.

It is already clear that the programme won’t lack candidates: the NIH has received unsolicited copies of some patients’ details. Still, they will need to be referred to the new hospital by a doctor.