Slashdot Mirror
Google To Offer Better Medical Advice When You Search Your Symptoms (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNBC: Google said Monday that it will be improving its catalog of searched Googled health symptoms by adding information on related health conditions that have been vetted by the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School. For example, if you type "headache on one side," Google will offer up a list of associated conditions like "migraine," "common cold" or "tension headache." When it comes to general searches like "headache," the company will also give an overview description along with information on self-treatment options or symptoms that warrant a doctor's visit. In Google's official blog post, the company said roughly 1 percent of the searches on Google, which equates to millions of searches, are related to symptoms users are researching. However, search results can be confusing, and result in "unnecessary anxiety and stress," Google said. It plans to use its Knowledge Graph feature, which contains high-quality medical information collected from doctors, to enhance search results.
I hope Google will program in some advice for Slashdot users. Their most common search is "can I get an STD from masturbating?" followed closely by "dildo stuck in anus". Surely Google can offer some help to Slashdot users, too.
and you are going to die.
They release appointments for the next day at 12:30pm and they go very fast...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
If they can filter out all the pseudoscience waffle (Anti-vax , quantum-foo, etc) it might actually do wonders for peoples scientific literacy, especially at a time when good science can mean life or death.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
For example, if you type "headache on one side," Google will offer up a list of associated conditions like "migraine," "common cold" or "tension headache."
But people will still be picking the "brain tumor" of that list of possible conditions.
bickerdyke
Wow, will offer things like migraine, common cold and tension headache? The AI singularity is near! Is that was AI nutters call "Deep Learning"? What a joke.
halp halp! I NEED HALP can teh google halp me!
oh, has google ass raped one of its customers again??
It has been an official illness registered by the American Psychiatric Association. But the environmentalists and already befallen gay-ists have exerted pressure to un-mark it. The gays because they are gay and the environmentalists because they want to destroy any human life on earth to "preserve" it.
It has been an official illness registered by the American Psychiatric Association. But the environmentalists and already befallen gay-ists have exerted pressure to un-mark it. The gays because they are gay and the environmentalists because they want to destroy any human life on earth to "preserve" it.
An irrational and intense fixation on a group that has no impact on your life, along with unsubstantiated statements that are soundly incorrect, is far more of a sign of mental distress than "gayism."
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
nig.ger fag sex gives you cancer yes.
trying to see a Doctor in the UK is an exercise in frustration in trying to navigate the labyrinthine system set up to manage their 48 hour waiting targets.... you have to be really dedicated to push yourself forward to get a same day appointment... if lucky, you'll get a telephone appointment or else be seen by the practice nurse
They release appointments for the next day at 12:30pm and they go very fast...
Isn't single-payer medicine GREAT!!!
Ask the US veterans who died waiting for care from the US Department of Veteran's Affairs!
as a beta tester, i can tell you that this is a vast improvement to the old system.
my list of symptoms symptoms: "partially numb to pain, shortness of breath, cannot raise left hand to keyboard"
Before it scared the crap out of me with this line: "you have having heart-attack or stroke. CALL FOR MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IMMEDIATELY" :)
However, the new system gave me a proper reply: "you have Attention Deficit Disorder, need to exercise more and please stop masterbating before using Google Health"
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Why not. It's not like anyone thinks search results are simply searches of an index of what's on the web anymore.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Last time I attempted to get a doctor's appointment I was told "we are scheduling two months out..." & my healthcare insurance is "premium". It should be premium for what I pay for it. I had to get a new doctor last year. After navigating the labyrinthine system I was able to find a doctor that was somewhat in my part of town & of course, 6+ weeks for the first appointment.
De-fund the shit out of a program, then point at it & say "look! It doesn't work!"
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Better advice or not, the medical searches you perform will still be added to the profile of information kept about you by Google.
Any medical related searches should be performed anonymously through some sort of proxy.
Let's hope Trump will get president so that he makes people like you shut up. You harm our national integrity. Look how it has ended in orlando, here gay-ism has turned a peaceful young man with a family into a brutal killer who has killed fellow gay-ists. Most of the gays end up being peaceful, but it may also escalate like in this case. Its a matter of national security.
They need help why do you deny them that help.
Posting multiple posts pretending to be different people - multi personality disorder. Claims events happened that can be demonstrably proven not to have - hallucinations. Refuses to read another's viewpoint - narcissistic disorder. Belief that gay people are out to get you - severe paranoria. Buddy, if you have pills, please go and take them, your doctor prescribes medicine for a reason.
You have an interesting viewpoint though (stupid, but curious). Those gay people were Americans, and the guy who killed them immigrated from Afghanistan and dreamed of repeating 9/11. The kind of nonsense your spouting usually comes from are those who are super nationalists - that all foreigners are evil. You view a terrorist from Afghanistan as more justified than a gay American?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Don't get me wrong. Islam has greatly advanced his illness. After all, mohammad was a pedophile. Also, Islam was the source for his phantasies as you correctly said. But in this particular case, him being gay-ist played a greater role than him being a muslim.
It was a radical islamic terrorist attack executed by a mentally ill gay person.
It's odd you have such a hard time wherever you are in the UK. I've lived in Devon, several areas of London and Bristol and in all those places same day appointments were very easy to get and simply required calling the practice at a specified time in the morning (usually between 8 and 9) and they would allocate you a time. And if you missed that lots of practices have evening appointments which get released sometime in the afternoon. My current practice even guarantees you a phone appointment if you urgently need a doctor and missed all the appointments. I have a lot of love for the NHS, it might have some issues but when compared with the mess in America it's just amazing.
The thing I hate about WebMD is that it just doesn't differentiate. It just says I'm dying of cancer. If google can do that and also tell me what KIND of cancer is killing me, that would be a huge leap forward.
Isn't single-payer medicine GREAT!!!
As opposed to the 2-3 month waits for specialist appointments I have to endure here in the land of the free, yes.
When a doctor is affiliated with hospital A, it doesn't matter whether a doctor at hospital B is available sooner. Doctors get penalized for sending too many patients out of their affiliate networks.
When everybody is affiliated with the national health service, that ceases to become a problem.
User: boils on penis luminescent green secretions ... uhhh... well you can guess the rest.
Google: do you live in California?
User: yes
Google: Have you been abducted by Aliens recently??
User: Yeah, half the state has been abducted by Aliens.
Google: Ummm... was there sexual intercourse involved?
User: yes
Google: Oh dear.... you need to rub Gundark saliva on the boils, twice daily for a month.
User: Who sells Gundark saliva?
Google: Nobody.
User: Somebody must sell the stuff?!?!
Google: No, you must travel to Gliese 581 d, wrestle a Gundark to the ground and persuade it to
User: Damn!
Google: You should bring a file, Gundarks have sharp teeth.
When I went to my doctor, he used Google to do some extra research. I was happy with that, To me that means he is most likely looking for confirmation or extra information that can help him to do a better diagnosis.
Even if I would do the same search and gotten the same results, the treatment might have been completely different. And even then he said:
We start with A, take a scan and then we will do B and perhaps C and later D.
In fact I did a search and step A was mentioned on page 3 of the resuls and that while it worked and required no medicine at all
This all because he not only know what to look for but also how to interpret it.
If you do a search for an issue in IT and they all say to do "rm -rf /" you will know if that would be the right thing to do or not. I would not expect my doctor to know that.
Cars: When you go to the doctor and sum up the symtons is like telling a mechanic there is a strange noise and descibe the noise. The better you describe the noise, the more likely it is that the mechanic know what the problem is. It is, however, also his experience that knows if he needs to look at the transmission or sell you some blinker fluid.
This experience Google has not. Also because Google will not ask extra question, like "How many km did you drive?", "What car are you driving" or "Have you already replaced the blinker fluid since you last bought the car?"
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Help me google!
Posting multiple posts pretending to be different people - multi personality disorder.
Applying Occam's Razor, the more likely explanation is that you're being trolled...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Blame Thatcherism and New Thatcherism - or, rather, the fucking stupid voting public. The NHS was so damn good up through the '80s, and what can barely get you an appointment today would be met back then by a doctor visiting your house.
If people could put their dicks away for a moment and stop masturbating over a fantasy of an Empire long dead, we might actually start paying attention to how the Tories have been buttraping us for the past 35 years. If you think TTIP is bad after EU moderation, think how bad the raw version supported by the free marketroids like Boris and Farridge will be.
No need to expand spying, just put all muslim males between 15 - 35 on the watchlist. Moderate Islam thinks gays should die, "radical" Islam follows through. I fail to see the the need to differentiate. Europe is off its rocker thinking that bringing all of these refugees in is a good idea, by and large they have no desire to assimilate.
I am an *MD* (though I mostly work in research).
You put way too much faith in doctors. Just because someone is "professionally trained" or has "years of experience" doesn't mean anything at all. {...} I am always amazed at how people think doctors know something special about vaccines just because they went to medical school. {...} They just prescribe the stuff.
We don't only prescribe, we are also trained how to react in case of of strong reaction (e.g.: allergies).
Though in some jurisdiction, the same could also be handled by paramedics.
(Also, we do get basic training in pharmacology. If some of my peers are too stupid to actually study it correctly, that's an entire different matter, though...)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In additions to all the arguments you've given:
- there's also the problem of herd immunity.
the more people got a vaccine against some disease, the more difficulty this disease has to find the next "free" host to infect. Beyond a certain percentage of vaccinated people, the disease can't spread across the population because it almost never find a nearby infectable host.
Conversely under a certain percentage of vaccinated people, the disease can roam freely among the population.
Refusing to get a vaccine not only change *one*'s own risk of catching the disease, but contributes to lowering the herd immunity and in creases the overall population's risk to catch the disease.
And conversely, deciding to get a vaccine will increase herd immunity and also help protecting the few people who cannot get the vaccine (because of allergies, diminished immune system, etc.)
- speaking about autism and vacines:
Since then, the study has proven to be bunk and has been retracted.
Autism has been proven to have genetic basis, and to start developing already in utero (before exposed to the first ever vaccine).
Autism has no known mecanisms linked to the immune-system.
There's just some time-correlation due to external factor.
For details: it's due to age.
- It happens that most autism are diagnosed in childhood, because that's where it's easiest for parent to observe the abnormal behaviour patterns (e.g.: attention deficit), unlike in newborn or while still in the womb (where some of the autism already starts to develop).
- It also happens that children gets the most vaccine (unlike adults who only need some special shots for exotic diseases or/and only get boosters).
- So autism also happen to get discovered in kids who also got a vaccine.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Posting multiple posts pretending to be different people - multi personality disorder.
Applying Occam's Razor, the more likely explanation is that you're being trolled...
Of course it's a troll, I guess the sarcasm was a little subtle. But c'mon, you don't find an anti-gay troll who defends an Afghani over an American fascinating? Usually it's just the conservative points magnified. As crappy and obvious as it is, at least it's something new, most just repeat what's already been said a 1000 times. I have a policy of not feeding trolls, but every once in a while it's pretty entertaining to poke them.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Just what my hypochondriac girlfriend needs !
Now, I wonder what happens when I type in the symptoms of an actual CNS tumor.
I predict that once this google subsystem will be in production (well, it's google, so probably just a later "beta" stage, only better debugged and tuned).
- it will correctly list tumors among the probable cause (along with other plausible CNS diseases - e.g.: vascular - depending on symptoms list)
- people will still pick-up the weird case-report where it was due to some environmental poisoning that's mentioned once after 10 pages of search-results. And sue the City for trying to brain-control them with said poisoning.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Cool - so that solves one problem while creating how many more?
Kind of like how Obama care solved the pre-existing issue while creating entire new sets of problem
You can try to see a different doctor. or go to a local urgent care center. The real trick is to allow RN, NP, and PA a little more freedom in the health care institution and allow them to treat many of the simple problems. Without having to go to an expensive dr for every little issue.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You think this is a new problem?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Thanks for your suggestions. Yes, now days if I need an appointment fast, NPs and PAs are what I get. However, you still have to have that primary doctor first & that is what I required, a new doctor. Nurse Practitioner, Physician's Assistant... sounds like the same solution from the guy from the UK. Mine just costs more, much more.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Does this come at the cost of being able to research rarer ailments? I'm less interested in googling illnesses that are easily identified by your general practitioner.
Not sure why you think I consider this a new "problem."
It's only a problem in that some providers don't want to reduce their pricing so that they can be part of a larger network (like UHC.) Why would they suddenly want to do this just because their is now one payor?
Umm, probably because if there is only one game in town, you either play that game or hope that there are enough people willing to shell out of their own pocket for service. Good luck with that. I too have no primary physician like grandparent. Mine dropped out. And there are not that many that take my plan in the area.
Kind of like how Obama care solved the pre-existing issue while creating entire new sets of problem
Personally my coverage has a huge network of providers & I do not need a referral to a specialist. I can go nearly anywhere. But I'll still wait 2-3 months.
IMO single payer is really about getting rid of health insurance companies. Fucking parasites. Everyone needs healthcare, if not you this year, your mom or your child.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
How about telling users to get off their asses and go see a doctor rather than self-medicating...
You mean get an appointment and let the doctor google the symptoms for you?
Sounds pretty much like what the world and his/her infomatics monkey were trying to sell budget-holding informatics monkeys 15 years ago. I'm sure I'm excited, but would be more excited by a clear account of the whole bidness.
The non-trivial challenge of delivering useful health information in the absence of a useful patient record has burned quite a lot cash and made quite a few careers. Citizens may wish to review Google's interminable chain of cross referenced privacy policies. Give me fluffy results any time. I can make my own mind up and nobody need know too much about what was going on in it. If I go for "I'm feeling yucky" and stop there.... more people than I want to know already get to know. Who else will eventually be authorised to know under "we reserve the right to modify our terms" clauses?
Secondly, medics and programmers have a lot in common. Both are (or should be) scientists, who often fail to do their job properly when they get to imagining they are artists. (Poiticians being, needless to say, artists who believe they are scientists.)
Thirdly, the medical and IT professions [arguably] both deserve everything they get from the self-obsessed consumers of their services.
Kaiser in California gets me a Drs. appointment the next day, if not my doctor then another.
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2016 @06:48AM (#52358049)
trying to see a Doctor in the UK is an exercise in frustration in trying to navigate the labyrinthine system set up to manage their 48 hour waiting targets.... you have to be really dedicated to push yourself forward to get a same day appointment... if lucky, you'll get a telephone appointment or else be seen by the practice nurse
They release appointments for the next day at 12:30pm and they go very fast...
Isn't single-payer medicine GREAT!!!
I assume you are an American anonymous coward. I wonder when the last time was that you needed to get health care in the American free market system.
http://archderm.jamanetwork.co...
The Accuracy of Dermatology Network Physician Directories Posted by Medicare Advantage Health Plans in an Era of Narrow Networks
Jack S. Resneck Jr, Aaron Quiggle, Michael Liu, BS3; David W. Brewster
JAMA Dermatol. Published online October 29, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2014.3902
48.9% of physicians were reachable, accepted the listed plan, and offered an appointment for our fictitious patient. Many of the dermatologists listed had incorrect contact information, were deceased, retired, or had moved, were not accepting new patients, did not accept the insurance plan, or were subspecialized.
Ask the US veterans who died waiting for care from the US Department of Veteran's Affairs!
I know some veterans who go to the VA health care system. I would trade my health plan for theirs tomorrow, and they would never trade their plan for mine.
Bernie Sanders is on the Senate committee that covers VA health care, and he said that people complain about access, but once they're in the system, their care is excellent.
The problem was that the Republicans wanted to have wars but they don't want to pay for health care for the soldiers who fought that war. Their solution is, "cut the budget and privatize." Adopt the methods of our MBAs and private corporations. Give them impossible goals to meet, and if they can't meet them, fire them and hire somebody else. That worked so well for BP and Enron.
I'm not going to defend the indefensible. There were reports of veterans who had for example bladder cancer, who didn't get treated in time, and whose bladder cancer went from treatable to untreatable. But that happens (all the time) in the free market health care system, when people can't afford to go to a doctor at all. And it happened because the Republican budget-cutters cut the VA budget, under the Republican "Bricks without Straw" policy.
I do a lot of medical literature searches. The outcomes of the VA system are among the best. If you need, say, coronary bypass surgery, your chances of surviving are as good in the VA system as anywhere in the world. Including Sweden.
They've done a lot of the major studies in treating heart disease, cancer, diabetes, COPD, and all the conditions that affect veterans. If you go to a medical conference, and they're trying to decide what the best treatment is, they're always talking about the "VA study," which is often the definitive study.
Oh yeah -- the other benefit of the VA system is that when a VA doctor recommends surgery, it's because he (and his colleagues) think you'll really be better off, not because he gets a $3,000 surgical fee, like a doctor in the private sector. And they have the evidence to prove it.)
The whole of the medical profession has been absolutely shut up about thousands of medical issues that can and should be handled by simple readily available help and cures. No doctor will tell a diabetic that Cinnamon is a helpful adjunct to one's medical regime. The pharmaceutical community wants the unknowing populous to spend hard earned and egregious amounts of money on some patented drug instead of some easy to find and cheap to buy perfectly good condiment. Why?, so the drug houses get filthy rich off the teeming populous. Google will have the same screws put to it's "information" with out any truth in medicine! Where does one go to find real medical treatment and cures with out the Pharmaceutical community shutting them up?
This is where I got the idea you saw that is a "new problem":
Kind of like how Obama care solved the pre-existing issue while creating entire new sets of problem
Personally my coverage has a huge network of providers & I do not need a referral to a specialist. I can go nearly anywhere. But I'll still wait 2-3 months.
IMO single payer is really about getting rid of health insurance companies. Fucking parasites. Everyone needs healthcare, if not you this year, your mom or your child.
My insurance isn't that great but I never have to wait 2-3 months to get in to see a specialist and that is with needing a referral from my PCP.
I don't see government as any less parasitical than insurance companies (or more caring).
In fact, when I worked at a DME company, Medicare was the hardest to work with unless you were a company with a lot of capital to be able to wait months before getting paid. A lot of our smaller competitors were destroyed simply by not having enough assets to wait months (most employees won't wait for Medicare to start paying bills and most companies won't sell parts based on the hope that Medicare will pay it's claims.) Since we were a larger company, the red tape benefited us simply because it destroyed our competitors better than we could have.
Don't get me wrong. Islam has greatly advanced his illness. After all, mohammad was a pedophile. Also, Islam was the source for his phantasies as you correctly said. But in this particular case, him being gay-ist played a greater role than him being a muslim.
It was a radical islamic terrorist attack executed by a mentally ill gay person.
Ah, so him being gay was more dangerous then him being muslim? Then humor me, why would he attack other gay people? If gays were self-exterminating, then wouldn't they all be dead by now? Your delusions are fascinating. Tell me, how do the Chinese factor into this? Since they manufactured most of the products he likely touched, did their inherent chinese-ish also hijack his brain too? How about me? We were both American citizens. Since I am a "stupid overweight fag", as you so eloquently put it, did my evidently clearly inherent obesity travel across the IRS database and infect his mind? How do Obama and Trump figure into all of this? Please, tell me more.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
I got a same day appointment today, and then the medicine for my daughter was £0 as well. Because she's under 16. Otherwise the day would have cost us £6 in cash.
if this happen then wont use medical apps
As much as self-medicating can be bad, seeing a doctor for a common cold is a waste of time for everyone, unless you are trying to get a sick day.
It's like my family doctor. We live near the beach, and every summer, there are endless queues of people with sunburns and minor heat illnesses. Come on, do you really need a doctor to tell you that you have to hydrate, protect yourself from the sun and maybe get you some Biafine?
It's not about "caring". Nobody cares about you except you and (hopefully) your family. The government does not "care", your insurance company does not "care", and your health care providers do not "care". The question isn't about "who cares", the question is "how many middlemen do we have marking up the cost of delivery?". Insurance companies add 9-17% to the cost of delivery and add no value; their one purported value -- to minimize risk and maximize amortization of cost across the largest group of people -- can easily be supplied by any organization with the financial resources to do so (i.e. the government).
Huh. Methinks your smaller competitors went out of business because they were stupid. For instance, nobody in their Finance department had ever heard of A/R factoring, in which you convert your accounts receivable into cash.