10-17-2016 National:When you’re not feeling well, your first move might be checking your symptoms with a search engine. A recent study, however, suggests real doctors are still way more accurate than any symptom checker tools out there.
The study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association Internal Medicine, tested 234 physicians and 23 online symptom checkers—including the popular WebMD and Mayo Clinic—on 45 hypothetical patients with their own symptoms and medical history.
The physicians were able to correctly diagnose 72% of the patients (mind, that’s 72% without running any tests), while symptom checkers could only get 34% right. And when it came to serious conditions, doctors were far more accurate than even the best symptom checking tools.
