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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've been misdiagnosed by doctors multiple times. And been scheduled to take expensive tests that were contraindicated, or medication that also was contraindicated. I expect many if not most people just go along.
Internet and libraries have provided help where doctors haven't. And internet and libraries don't have a several months wait to get an appointment, and are never consistently late when you do have one.
For me, the only value doctors have is the ability to prescribe medication and lab tests I can't order myself, and do surgeries I can't do myself.
And they're arrogant, so the trick is to steer and nudge them in the right direction and make them think that they came up with the plans and diagnoses. Much like with mid-level management in general, which I suppose they are.
Otherwise, taking your body to a physician is like taking your short stroke server to a Best Buy "Geek Squad" for service. They know just enough to cause damage to anything out of the ordinary.