Digital Diagnosis A Poor Substitute To Seeing A Doctor

When ill, most patients will grab their smartphones, not to call the doctor but to open an app or a website.

However, research shows getting health advice online is risky.

A study by doctors from the Mayo Clinic found going online for health advice is more likely to result in getting no or incomplete advice than the right advice, according to reports.

No site the doctors examined, including Google search results and various symptom checkers, listed all the necessary symptoms for a patient to determine an accurate triage — whether to rush to the emergency room, call the doctor or treat the condition at home.

When online symptom checkers suggested diagnoses, they suggest so many of possibilities that patients are unlikely to self-diagnosis.

Also among the findings, a third of the sites did not list any of the key symptoms and of the sites that checked key symptoms, four in 10 provided no triage advice.

Read more at NYTimes.com.