Symptom checkers on the Internet have opened the doors for efficient diagnosis of physical conditions which doctors sometimes fail to identify.

1. Rising Trend in Internet Diagnoses
An Article by,
Outsource Strategies International

2. The Rising Trend of Internet Diagnoses
How often do you feel that doctors do not diagnose accurately? Reading reports of
many people who’ve had their physical condition aggravate because doctors failed to
heed the early warning signs would do its bit in reinforcing this opinion. So if doctors
do not diagnose accurately at a brick and mortar medical practice, what’s the backup
plan? Diagnosis at home through online symptom checkers of course!
Get Your Diagnosis Online
Internet symptom checkers are the new trend among Americans. These are run by
doctors and there is a general encouragement from the healthcare sector to the
public to use these online services before they meet a doctor at a healthcare
practice. The reason?, Doctors believe these online pre-diagnoses actually help save
time and increase the productivity of the consultations. Symptom checkers could also
provide out-of-the-box diagnosis possibilities that doctors really would not have
thought of at first.
Many of these online diagnostic tools are actually reliable since they are run by real
doctors who incorporate these tools in their websites. They include the diagnoses
into the electronic medical records.
The Isabel Story
There are many instances where an Internet symptom checker called Isabel has
actually helped patients get their symptoms properly identified. The Wall Street
Journal has carried an article on Isabel, the online paid symptom checker started by
UK-based Jason Maude and named for his 17-year-old daughter who developed an
undetected life-threatening condition when she contracted chickenpox while she was
3. Dr. Mark Graber, Senior Fellow of RTI International, a nonprofit research
organization, President of the organization called Society to Improve Diagnosis in
Medicine, and a doctor at New York’s Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, coauthored a study that was recorded in a 2007 issue of the Journal of General Internal
Medicine which revealed Isabel had a 96% strike rate in suggesting the right
diagnosis following a study of 50 patients with complex conditions.
It also worked for 27-year-old Rick Ramirez from Salt Lake City, Utah who began to
feel sharp pain in his buttocks, lower back and legs since November 2012. A visit to
the doctor did not result in any successful diagnosis except for the suggestion that
he would have to wear his belt looser. The pains were not ceasing but were affecting
him intermittently. After many online symptom checkers he ended up with Isabel.
After entering his symptoms the system came up with slipped or herniated disk as
being the most common possibility while also providing him with more information
about the disorder, following which Ramirez headed to an emergency care center
armed with the Isabel data. The center took into account the research and conducted
an MRI that confirmed the slipped disk pre-diagnosis.
Other Internet Symptom Checkers Out There

3. There are also other reliable online symptom checkers around, notably those run by
WebMD, Mayo Clinic, iTriage, A.D.A.M, and Healthychildren.org of the American
Academy of Pediatrics. Considering the popularity of quick symptom checking among
Americans, it is no surprise that so many have cropped up. Philips North America
conducted a survey in December 2012 among more than thousand individuals in
America which revealed that there were over 40% of the surveyed people who felt
quite comfortable to check their symptoms online. 25% of them revealed that they
used these online tools instead of visiting the doctor while another 25% said that
they used them as often as their visits to the doctor.
The future really seems bright for these Internet diagnostic tools. Once a novelty,
these tools have now become vital means of improving the quality of healthcare
administered to patients while also making the work of physicians and healthcare
practices easier.
[The information in this article was initially published on the website online.wsj.com.]
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