Google self-diagnosis right only 36% of time

[Kyng]

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-d...wrong.html

Many people turn to 'Dr. Google' to self-diagnose their health symptoms and seek medical advice, but online symptom checkers are only accurate about a third of the time, according to new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research published in the Medical Journal of Australia today.

The study analysed 36 international mobile and web-based symptom checkers and found they produced the correct diagnosis as the first result just 36 per cent of the time, and within the top three results 52 per cent of the time.

The research also found that the advice provided on when and where to seek health care was accurate 49 per cent of the time.

It has been estimated that Google's health related searches amount to approximately 70,000 every minute. Close to 40 per cent of Australians look for online health information to self-treat.

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Honestly, this doesn't surprise me all that much: if anything, the surprise is that it's as high as this. There are loads of diseases that have coughing, headaches, and so on - and it's hard to imagine 'Doctor Google' having a high success rate with those.

Fortunately, it's not something I've used very often - and, even when I have, I haven't trusted it much .

[Rincewind]

Yeah, I hope people aren't encouraged by the shiny number and miss on the fact that it MISSES A WHOLE LOT.

But I'm worried, because some people genuinely think that technology is some kind of miraculous force and will skip on seeing a professional (not to mention, some of the symptoms above described are signature Coronavirus ones, so...).