Medical Diagnoses Set by Humans Prevail over Smart Apps

Medical diagnoses are safer than those provided by online checkers.

(Mirror Daily, United States) A new study accounts for the accuracy of medical diagnoses set by doctors, which are better than those established by smart apps. There are symptom checkers that can be accessed on the Internet and provided by health experts, but they can fail in many of the cases. However, a checkup at the doctors is still the best solution to your health problems.

The recent study is not big, but it is based on relevant information. According to the findings, medical diagnoses set by humans are right in seventy-two percent of the cases. On the other hand, technology-based methods of diagnosing proved to fail in most of the cases, with only thirty-four percent proper diagnoses.

There are twenty-three online systems which allow people to introduce their symptoms and wait for the diagnosis. They are available in the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the new study shows that this modern method still needs to be improved, as its efficiency falls short.

The new study aimed to compare the effectiveness of doctors and that of tech devices. In order to draw a comparison, the researchers assigned similar tasks to human physicians and smart apps meant to set diagnoses. What the scientists did was assign forty-five cases to these online checkers, as well as to two hundred thirty-four different doctors. They didn’t have the chance of examining the patients, so they had the same information on symptoms and medical history as the online applications.

The experiment proved that the medical diagnoses from humans were set faster and were more accurate than those provided by the online programs. The cases included both mild and severe conditions, as well as both common and rare diseases. The physicians were able to identify the severe and complicated cases correctly more often than the smart apps.

Specialists admit that doctors can make mistakes when setting a diagnosis too. There are ten to fifteen chances that a medical diagnosis established by physicians to be wrong. However, the risk is significantly lower with human doctors than with online checkers.

The developers of such programs should focus on improving their efficiency. Technology proved itself extremely useful in the medical field on many occasions. A program or device which could eradicate error risk with diagnoses would be highly helpful for both doctors and patients.

For the time being, remember to pay a visit to the doctor whenever you don’t feel well.

Image courtesy of: Wikipedia

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Tara Hamilton

Tara has graduated from the University of Oregon, with bachelors degree in Spanish Literature in 2010. She lived in Miami for one year and travelled extensively before settling down in El Paso.