Doctors suggest Googling for a cure

Doctors are being urged to use Google to help diagnose rare illnesses

Two Australian medical researchers writing in the British Medical Journal have urged doctors to use Google to help diagnose rare illnesses in patients. 

The conclusion is based on research which showed that Google could provide a reasonable degree of accuracy, correctly diagnosing 15 of 26 cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005. 

"Useful information on even the rarest medical syndromes can now be found and digested within a matter of minutes," said the article by Hangwi Tang and Jennifer Hwee Kwoon Ng from the Department of Rheumatology at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Queensland. 

"Our study suggests that, in difficult diagnostic cases, it is often useful to Google for a diagnosis. Search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use."

Tang and Ng are not suggesting that patients self-diagnose using Google, but claim that the search engine can give a doctor an important edge, quoting anecdotal and statistical evidence.

"Patients may find the search less efficient and be less likely to reach the correct diagnosis," said the researchers.

"We believe that Google searches by a human expert (a doctor) have a better yield, as Google is exceedingly good at finding documents with co-occurrence of the signs/symptoms used as search terms, and human experts are efficient in selecting relevant documents."

Use of Google to search for medical conditions by an amateur can yield confusing results, vnunet.com found. Typing 'severe chest pain' into the advanced search facility results in about 1.6 million hits.

Among the first 10 is Family Doctor, which provides a decision tree that yields 14 different outcomes for severe chest pain, ranging from heart attack (recommended course of action: contact emergency services) to hyperventilation (lie down and relax). 

Also in the first 10 hits, Wrong Diagnosis provides a list of nearly 100 conditions that can cause chest pain, from asbestosis to a bacterial digestive infection known as Whipple's disease.