Google Health Info: More Harm Than Good?
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Google’s recent announcement it will updating its health conditions has some providers concerned the information will overwhelm and confuse curious patients.
“Health conditions continue to be among the most important things people ask Google about, and one of our most popular features,” notes the Official Google Search Blog. “We’re announcing broader updates — over the next few weeks, you’ll notice hundreds more health conditions (soon over 900 total, more than double the number we started with) where you’ll get quick at-a-glance info on symptoms, treatments, prevalence, and more.”
Google’s campaign to double the health information covered through its search engines seems like a good thing, but some physicians say it will only add to the confusion created by patients researching their health online.
Fierce Health IT reports this update was inspired by a recent spike in searches for information on Legionnaire's disease. “As before, we’ve consulted and worked closely with a team of doctors to curate and validate this information,” assured the blog. Yet when Time Magazine asked doctors their thoughts on the inclusion of this new information, they had mixed feelings.
Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center said, “I think what Google is doing is not such a bad thing. Like it or not, that’s where people are going for health information. It’s the future. Making it better and vetting it by doctors is a good idea. It would also be nice if every time you googled ‘vaccines,’ ‘autism’ didn’t come up. People just need to remember that this is meant to aid them, but it’s not a substitute for health care.”
Dr. Robert Hasty of the Campbell University Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine was a little more on the fence, saying, “Easy access to health information has the potential to empower patients and improve health. However, patients should be cautious with using unvetted health information and should involve healthcare professionals to help make informed decisions.”
And Dr. William A. Bornstein, Chief Medical Officer & Chief Quality Officer at Emory Healthcare was a little more pessimistic, noting, “As always, the devil will be in the details. Unintended consequences will be inevitable but can be minimized if Google is committed to measuring the outcomes from the use of this tool and using the outcomes data to inform iterative cycles of improvement of the tool. Conflicts of interest will also need to be assiduously avoided. If Google does this right, it should provide a nice alternative to random Web searches about health-related topics.”