Search engines--- a new tool for doctors.

It’s no small wonder more doctors are using Google search to help with the diagnosis of an illness. All students, even medical students, use Google all the time. According to an article in Daily Mail, Doctors using Google to diagnose illnesses, a research done by a team of doctors found that doing a search on Google correctly diagnosed an illness 58% of the time.

This is not to say that patients can self-diagnose without seeking medical attention. “The efficiency of the search and the usefulness of the retrieved information depend on the searchers' knowledge base.” However, this is a wakeup call for more doctors to use Google search as a tool to help them diagnose an illness--- or at least to verify that their original diagnosis is correct. According to the article, “doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 per cent of the time… a rate [that] has not really changed since the 1930s.”

Incredible.

This is a new age where new findings are released constantly. It is not possible, even for the best doctor, to be up-to-date on every study, every finding. Therefore, it is very wise to use a search engine as a tool to verify the diagnosis made was the correct one.