A method for diagnosis assistance exploits similarity between a new medical case and existing medical cases and experts when embedded in a common embedding space. Different types of queries are provided for, including a query-by-cases and a query-by-experts. These may be associated with different cost structures that encourage the requester to use the query-by-cases first and seek expert assistance if this proves unsuccessful. Depending on whether the query-by-cases or query-by-experts is requested, a subset of the existing cases or experts is identified based on the similarity of their representations, in the embedding space, with a representation of the new case in the embedding space. There may then be provision for communicating the new case to a selected one or more of the subset of experts for the expert to attempt to provide a diagnosis.