Slashdot Mirror
The Downside of Connected Healthcare: Cyberchondria
MollsEisley writes: Like hypochondria, cyberchondria is simply a more elegant way of saying "it's all in your head" — only in this case the people self-diagnosing are using tenuous data gleaned from the Internet and our ever-connected gadgets to support their hypotheses. Virtually everyone who has put the Microsoft Band through its paces has come away with the claim that its heart rate monitor is simply bad. ... The Moto 360’s heart rate monitor doesn’t fare much better, and in only the most perfect, motionless conditions will it provide anything close to an accurate reading. These are horribly inaccurate health tools, yet they are used as bullet points for would-be buyers to cling to. ... Even WebMD—the service that has given so many cyberchondriacs the fuel to continue guessing—has a note on every single one of its countless pages that states the site “does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.” And yet, that’s the one and only thing most people use WebMD for.
Surely hyperchondria will always find a way, the internet just makes it more efficient? In fairness to WebMD, what something is intended for and what people choose to use it for can be very different - I'd say, up to a reasonable point, if WebMD is fulfilling its primary purpose for which it was created, people need to take responsibility for the risks they take in depending on it while ignoring the advice to defer to a clinician, whether there's five of them or five hundred thousand. If they can't understand that responsibility, the problem is with the education system, not the internet.
Somebody recently pointed out that if you Google "chest pain" you could end up thinking it was harmless and you should just ignore it. They evidently hadn't tried Googling it. I continue to see ads on the TV saying, "please use your common sense if you have cold or flu symptoms to decide whether you have a serious risk, as going to your GP or A&E blocks services for others", and not "if you think you have a brain tumour, stay at home", so it seems internet self-diagnosis may not even be the primary issue. At what percentage do the few serious cases, who wouldn't have otherwise bothered going to a doctor, outweigh the number of Cyberchondriacs enabled by the same process?
Oh come now.
The reason that line exists is obviously for legal liability, it isn't any sort of evidence of how accurate (or lack of) WebMD considers their own information.
Woah there. Relax.
Anything that promotes professionals over quacks and amateurs is a good thing. Considering the source of health information for most people comes from nonsense planted into the news media by quacks, I can't see anything negative in promoting talking to professionals.
>I can't see anything negative in promoting talking to professionals.
Thanks, that will be $70 for removing a splinter, $70 for a cold that can't be treated, $70 for a minor sprained ankle that you should just stay off of for a week or two. There are times for professionals and there are times that they simply aren't needed. If you don't have hundreds of dollars to spend listening to people tell you something is minor and to come back if it gets worse then you need to use sound judgement instead of running to the doctor with every boo boo. Sound judgement includes consulting reasonable information sources but it all to often seems they are paywalled, tort-terrorized into saying "just see a doctor" or blocked out by quackery websites.
That doctor traffic also is why often you can't get an appointment to have someone look at a significant condition for a week and a half and why Americans go to the emergency room so often - where they can wait long periods before being treated for serious issues. That is the downside in promoting talking to professionals. There is no downside in shooting down quacks unless worse quacks take their place.