Symptom Checker Websites Right Half The Time

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Do your patients often come in with a diagnosis they found online? If they are getting their info from an online symptom checker it may only be accurate about half the time.

It’s common for patients to search online for the cause of their illness before deciding if it’s serious enough to seek a doctor’s advice. Unfortunately, not all online symptom checkers are created equal and a new study finds they are only accurate about 50 percent of the time.

“These sites are not a replacement for going to the doctor and getting a full evaluation and diagnosis,” says Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, one of the study’s authors according to Kaiser Health News. “They are simply providing some information on what might be going on with you.”

According to iHealth Beat, the study found about:

• One-third of the sites named the correct diagnosis as the patient's first option;
• 51 percent of the sites named the correct diagnosis in their top three options; and
• 58 percent of the sites named the correct diagnosis in their top 20 options.

Authors did note however, online symptom checkers were about as accurate as over-the-phone primary care physician diagnosis. Often, when dealing with patients over the phone, PCPs will advise their patients whether or not to seek urgent care.

“We’re always trying to improve but if most of the time the correct diagnosis is included in the list of possibilities, that’s all we’re attempting to do,” says Dr. John Wilkinson, who works on Mayo’s symptom checker. “The whole point is not to set the patient against the doctor or replace the doctor, but to make the patient much better informed and to ask the doctor much better questions, and then together they should do a much better job,” he says.

“While most doctors know patients are going to the Internet to search for medical advice, in terms of these symptom checkers, I’ve been surprised that few of my colleagues even knew they existed,” Mehrotra says.