Doctor Google, we assume

After examining 26 difficult cases from the New England Journal of Medicine. Australian medical researchers have found that the giant search engine Google can provide them with valuable, fast, backup information.

Dr Hangwi Tang and Dr Jennifer Ng of the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane selected the cases – including Cushing’s syndrome, encephalitis, and cirrhosis – and plugged the symptoms of each case into Google for a diagnosis. When Google was compared with the correct published diagnoses it was found that the search machine got it right 58% of the time.

Dr Tang says the study was driven by personal curiosity after noticing how patients and doctors alike were using Google to diagnose difficult cases. In one case he had a patient whose father used the search engine to correctly diagnose that his son had the rare circulatory condition Paget-von Schrötter syndrome.

The medical researchers said that an online search was likely to be more effective at helping to diagnose conditions with unique symptoms that can be used as search terms.

Part of the challenge in using Google was to be able to efficiently sift through the many pages of links that come from an online search.

Dr Tang thinks that doctors are better placed than patients at doing this because they are better at selecting relevant links.

Professor Johanna Westbrook of the Centre for Health Informatics in Sydney says the Brisbane hospital research findings were consistent with their research. The Centre looked at how specialised search engines could help clinicians to both diagnose and treat patients, using the best available evidence.

Dr Westbrook said this suggests search engines might help such nurses to diagnose and treat patients in rural areas where there are fewer doctors. An online search engine is available 24 hours a day, compared to a clinician or a hospital library.