Doctors diagnose diseases online with Google

Posted on Friday, November 10 2006 @ 22:43 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Australian researchers say it's not just patients who try to diagnose their disease online. Doctors do this too in difficult cases. The researchers say Google doesn't replace doctors, but it does help them to get quick access to an ever increasing medical knowledge base that might be impossible to hold in their head.
Dr Tang says the study was driven by personal curiosity after noticing how patients and doctors alike were using Google to diagnose difficult cases.

In one example he had a patient whose father used the search engine to correctly diagnose that his son had the rare circulatory condition -Paget-von Schrötter syndrome.

Dr Tang and Dr Ng selected 26 difficult cases presented in the New England Journal of Medicine, including Cushing's syndrome, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, encephalitis and cirrhosis.

They then plugged the symptoms of each case into the search engine to come up with a diagnosis.

When these diagnoses were compared with the correct published diagnoses, the researchers found that Google got it right 58 per cent of the time.
More details at ABC News.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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