Kairos has been a key concept in medicine for millennia and is frequently understood as “the right time” in relation to treatment. In this study we scrutinize kairos in the context of diagnostics. This has become highly topical as technological developments have caused diagnostics to be performed ever earlier in the disease development. Detecting risk factors, precursors, and predictors of disease (in biomarkers, pre-disease, and pre-pre-disease) has resulted in too early diagnoses, i.e., overdiagnoses. Nonetheless, despite vast advances in science and technology, diagnoses also come too late. Accordingly, timing diagnostics right is crucial. In this article we start with giving a brief overview of the etymology and general use of the concepts of kairos and diagnosis. Then we delimit kairos in diagnostics by analysing “too early” and “too late” diagnosis and by scrutinizing various phases of diagnostics. This leads us to define kairos of diagnostics as the time when there is potential for sufficient information for making a diagnosis that is most helpful for the person. It allows us to conclude that kairos is as important in diagnostics as in therapeutics.

Kairos 几千年来一直是医学中的一个关键概念，通常被理解为与治疗相关的“正确时机”。在这项研究中，我们在诊断的背景下仔细研究 kairos。随着技术的发展使得诊断可以在疾病发展的更早阶段进行，这已成为高度关注的话题。检测疾病的危险因素、前兆和预测因素（在生物标志物、疾病前期和疾病前期）导致诊断过早，即过度诊断。尽管如此，尽管科学技术取得了巨大进步，但诊断还是来得太晚了。因此，正确的诊断时机至关重要。在本文中，我们首先简要概述 kairos 和诊断概念的词源和一般用法。然后，我们通过分析“太早”和“太晚”诊断以及仔细检查诊断的各个阶段来界定诊断中的kairos。这导致我们将诊断的 kairos 定义为有可能获得足够的信息来做出对人最有帮助的诊断的时间。它让我们得出结论，kairos 在诊断中与治疗中同样重要。