Doctors Use Google To Diagnose Illness

Pity Google can't hand out prescriptions

[M_Bison]

[abc.net.au ]

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.

58% ain't too bad for a search engine!

[Wlauzon]

58% is as good as some doctors I bet.

[briggidere]

i can remeber last year i was at the doctors and he pulled up google in front of me and searched for my symptoms.

it did not fill me with confidence in the slightest.

DIY doctor, just use google!

[encyclo]

---

System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3152492.htm [webmasterworld.com] by tedster - 1:15 pm on Nov. 10, 2006 (EST -5)

---

[timesonline.co.uk...]

If in doubt, Google it, doctors puzzling over a diagnosis have been told. (...) Embarrassing as it may seem to professionals trained for many years in medicine, Google can often come up with the right answer.

In 58 per cent of the cases, Google came up with the right answer. (...) There were some errors. A condition deduced to be graft versus host disease turned out to be West Nile fever - quite a big difference. But the two doctors conclude that Google is well worth trying.

[Wlauzon]

I really don't have a problem with a doctor using Google as long as it to get kind of a 2nd opinion or look for other possibilities.

But I hope that is not their only source of diagnoses :!