If you ever found yourself surfing the internet for answers to why you’re
feeling under the weather, you’re not alone. In fact, at least one-third of persons now turn to internet for medical advice and using symptom checkers apps and website for both routine and urgent conditions, including chest pain.In an era when everyone is crying to save time , many of us feel that such symptom checkers can function as a tool for both triage (i.e patient treatments priority based on the severity of their condition.) and diagnosis. It’s quick, easy and may help us in a pinch than going to doctor take
appointment pay the fees.The research, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, in which the researchers asked 234 physicians to make diagnoses for 45 “clinical vignettes” that included patient medical history, but no results from a physical exam, blood test or other kind of lab work. They were asked to name the most likely diagnosis, along with two other possibilities. The physicians were in internal medicine, family practice or pediatrics. About half were in residency or fellowship, which meant they had not completed their training, a Los Angeles Times article points out.Still, they named the correct diagnosis first 72 percent of the time, while the online tools listed the correct diagnosis first just 34 percent of the time.
Doctors made the correct call among their top three picks 84 percent of the time, while the symptom checkers did so just 51 percent of the time. For common conditions, doctors’ accuracy was 70 percent, compared to 38 percent for apps. The difference grew to 76 percent vs. 28 percent for uncommon conditions. Accuracy registered at 65 percent to 41 percent for cases with low acuity and 79 percent to 24 percent for cases with high acuity. However, physicians still made errors in about 15 percent of cases but according to results of this study, doctors are more effective than symptom checkers to obtain an accurate diagnosis . But this computer-based algorithms in symptom checkers could be an effective aid for healthcare professionals to broaden their differential diagnosis. Medical Professionals is right users for such apps than we are because only they can know whether it is giving the right advice or not. Technotricky warns our readers when you feel ill go to your doctor first than going to google.
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