Doctors Should Use Google?!

I get a lot of information from the internet. If it’s not an emergency, I’ll look up health-related information online before going to my doctor and asking about it. The times that I’ve asked a doctor about a specific issue, I always found that I’m sitting there in the office listening to him tell me the exact same things that I learned online. There have been times when I’ve looked up my symptoms and arrived at a possible diagnosis. Again, I’d go see my doctor, and he would confirm my conclusions. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t take this too far. I haven’t switched from my regular doctor to Dr. Internet and don’t plan on doing so. Josh and I both worked for a very well-known online health information website, and we’ve seen how scary and harmful it can be when people exclusively use the internet as a way to not seek the medical attention that they need from trained professionals.

I ran into this amusing, and yes, slightly disturbing, news story that was referenced on Boing Boing.

Doctors in doubt about a patient’s ailment could use Google to help them reach a diagnosis, researchers said today.

Two Australian doctors have found that entering the symptoms of a tricky case into the internet search engine often results in accurately diagnosing the illness.

. . .

They said doctors would get much better results than patients, who may not be as capable of accurately describing their symptoms or evaluating which search results were most reliable. The doctors concluded that: “In difficult diagnostic cases, it is often useful. Web-based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use.”

I’m not sure how I feel about my doctor using the same method that I use to diagnose myself. It’s been pretty accurate for me, I suppose. It just doesn’t seem right somehow, though.

Here’s the link to the original news article.