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from the and-your-dr.-is-always-right-first-time dept.
For your typical hypochondriac, online symptom checkers are a rabbit hole of medical information and the anxiety that comes with it. But according to a new study led [PDF] by researchers at the Harvard Medical School, most of these sites are so inconsistent and inaccurate that patients shouldn't rely upon them for correct diagnoses.
In the study, which was published in the British Medical Journal, the researchers looked at 23 web sites from around the world that claim to offer information for diagnosis and triage (assessing how urgently a condition needs to be treated). They used 45 patient vignettes, about half of which were common conditions, to assess the sites' accuracy.
They found that the correct diagnosis came up first only 34 percent of the time. Half the sites had the right answer in their top three results, and almost 60 percent had it in the top 20. Triage advice fared a bit better, with accurate suggestions coming up first 57 percent of the time. The sites in which the right answer came up as the first result most often were: DocResponse (50 percent), Family Doctor (47 percent), and Isabel (44 percent).
What has been the experience of SN Members? Do they rely on online medical diagnosis?
[Also Covered By]: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/07/self-diagnosing-health-websites-study
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:33PM
I think the ~30% rate is coming from people just being inexperienced at it.
If something new pops into my life I am not an expert. I will and do make wild assumptions. You have been living with a particular condition for a long time. So you know the jargon you know what is probably a rabbit hole and what might be worth looking at. If I came down with something today I would have no clue. There are many things out there which share many of the same symptoms. So it could be very easy to misdiagnose. There unfortunately is not a test for everything.
Some conditions are just not very well diagnosed, as to do so probably would mean cutting you into little bitty pieces (which I am sure you are not interested in at the moment). For example my long time friend has severe migraines. He has been thru at least 50 different doctors and dozens of cat scans. A couple of meds help for a short time but not long and are semi pricy. He started looking at external causes (because of the internet and it worked for some people). I think I have finally convinced him the external causes are not it. He comes to me every couple of months with 'it is XYZ' I always respond 'no its not'. I am unfortunately vindicated most of the time.