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Doctors Perform Better Than Internet Or App-Based Symptoms Checkers, Says Study (sciencedaily.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Daily: Increasingly powerful computers using ever-more sophisticated programs are challenging human supremacy in areas as diverse as playing chess and making emotionally compelling music. But can digital diagnosticians match, or even outperform, human physicians? The answer, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, is "not quite." The findings, published Oct. 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine, show that physicians' performance is vastly superior and that doctors make a correct diagnosis more than twice as often as 23 commonly used symptom-checker apps. The analysis is believed to provide the first direct comparison between human-made and computer-based diagnoses. Diagnostic errors stem from failure to recognize a disease or to do so in a timely manner. Physicians make such errors roughly 10 to 15 percent of the time, researchers say. In the study, 234 internal medicine physicians were asked to evaluate 45 clinical cases, involving both common and uncommon conditions with varying degrees of severity. For each scenario, physicians had to identify the most likely diagnosis along with two additional possible diagnoses. Each clinical vignette was solved by at least 20 physicians. The physicians outperformed the symptom-checker apps, listing the correct diagnosis first 72 percent of the time, compared with 34 percent of the time for the digital platforms. Eighty-four percent of clinicians listed the correct diagnosis in the top three possibilities, compared with 51 percent for the digital symptom-checkers. The difference between physician and computer performance was most dramatic in more severe and less common conditions. It was smaller for less acute and more common illnesses.
In the study the doctors knew they had to perform well. In the real world you're lucky if they even listen to you for two minutes before prescribing what ever the pharma rep recommended at the free lunch yesterday
There is a hell of a lot more to observe with a patient than simple a checklist of yes/no values to see if someone has a particular diagnosis. For example, years back when I had a severe sore throat, I went into the doc. She took one look at me, mentioned there is a unique smell associated with strep throat, did the test for it, and handed me a prescription for the antibiotics all within a few short minutes. WebMD, as we all know, diagnoses cancer for when you stub your toe!
That's called a reputable peer-reviewed journal which is the highest standard, and an experiment conducted by rigorously trained experimenters. If you can find an actual flaw don't just post it here, send it in and they will redact the study. Otherwise, try again.
That's called a reputable peer-reviewed journal
... and all the peers are also doctors.
If you can find an actual flaw ...
Here is a flaw: The entire study was done with contrived "vignettes" rather than actual cases. The vignettes were written by human doctors, so just because other human doctors were better than apps at reading between the lines and figuring out the intended diagnosis, does not mean that they would be better at diagnosing actual patients.
I think there is only one clear conclusion from this study: Doctors really don't like these apps.
Do you have consistently high blood pressure? You have hypertension.
That's not really a diagnosis. That's just a different name for the symptoms. Bonus points for diagnosing "Pirmary Hypertension" which of course means "yeah dunno".
SJW n. One who posts facts.