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Is Google accurate for symptoms?
Two in five people end up diagnosing themselves with a serious disease after using Googling their symptoms. A survey of 2,000 Americans found that 43% of them had misdiagnosed themselves after searching their symptoms online. Diseases Are Complicated One of the biggest reasons you as a patient should never google your symptoms is that diseases are incredibly complex. Some symptoms can overlap many different diagnoses, all of which can range in severity. Symptom checkers, those tools that ask for information and suggest a diagnosis, are accurate only about half of the time. Most often, patients conveyed that symptom checker use enabled them to determine whether their condition might be serious, which helped them distinguish when to seek medical attention based on symptoms and severity (49/175, 28.0%; see Multimedia Appendix 5 for additional findings). Overall, the diagnostic and triage accuracy of symptom checkers are variable and of low accuracy. Given the increasing push towards adopting this class of technologies across numerous health systems, this study demonstrates that reliance upon symptom checkers could pose significant patient safety hazards. The difficulty of obtaining a formal diagnosis of autism in adulthood means many are going to self-diagnose, and in some cases self-diagnosis will be accurate. But the case against self-diagnosis is strong, leading to many asking if there is a middle ground.
How accurate is Googling your symptoms?
Two in five people end up diagnosing themselves with a serious disease after using Googling their symptoms. A survey of 2,000 Americans found that 43% of them had misdiagnosed themselves after searching their symptoms online. Admit it, You’ve Done it Before Of the Generation Z adults, 45% don’t have a primary care physician. And 51% of Millennials see a doctor less than once a year. But studies show that the number of adults who self-diagnose on the internet could be close to or well over 50%. The WebMD symptom checker was most frequently used and was assessed in eight studies. The primary diagnostic accuracy of WebMD ranged from 3 to 53% across a variety of medical conditions that were assessed in eight included studies (Table ​3)1,22. The accuracy of digital symptom checkers for both triage and diagnosis is generally low, which could pose a risk to patient safety, according to a review of studies published in npj Digital Medicine. Researchers compiled 10 studies that evaluated a total of 48 online symptom checkers. Self-diagnosis is the process of diagnosing, or identifying, medical conditions in oneself. It may be assisted by medical dictionaries, books, resources on the Internet, past personal experiences, or recognizing symptoms or medical signs of a condition that a family member previously had. A UK-based study that engaged 1071 patients found that more than 70% of individuals between the ages of 18 and 39 years would use a symptom checker as compared to only 51% aged between 55 and 69 years [15].