Symptom checkers: Human vs. digital and doctor vs. patient
You’re grumpy, and you wonder why. So you enter the word in a symptom checker online and find out you may have one of 82 disorders or diseases, ranging from a middle ear infection or menopause (and you’re a guy!) to dementia or a subarachnoid hemorrhage between your brain and the tissue that covers it.
Try again. You also have achy joints. Ah, that leads you to a list of 101 causes of joint pain. Maybe it’s ulcerative colitis-related. Who knew it could make your joints hurt? Or from infectious mono? That wasn’t a good date!
But you cannot find any condition that shows up on both lists. So maybe you have two different illnesses at the same time!
That can be an information-seeker’s nightmare. Yet hundreds of millions of times a year people turn to online and app-based symptom checkers to help figure out what’s ailing them, and if they should call the doctor or if it’s time for a visit to the emergency room pronto! You might as well ask a crystal ball if LeBron is happy in Los Angeles. It’s anybody’s guess. (We need you back in NE Ohio, LeBron.)
That’s the conclusion (not the one about LeBron) of a new study published in The Lancet that examines both the promise and reality of symptom checkers. The researchers looked at a wide range of studies on diagnostic direct-to-
consumer, interactive diagnostic apps is … uneven in the information provided and inconclusive with respect to safety and effectiveness.” Buyer beware, for sure.