Harvard researchers find that using the Internet to search for symptoms does not aggravate patient anxiety, and even improves diagnosis.
- Information seeking by patients can help in diagnosis
- Information seeking by patients can aid in diagnosis
- Hypochondriasis not necessarily linked to internet research on the meaning of symptoms
- In the future, artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role in diagnostics
You feel bad, and spin so early on your computer to find the origin of your symptoms? You’ve probably been told that was a bad idea. Harvard researchers demonstrate otherwise. On the specialized site JAMA, they publish the results of a study which shows that this reflex is even rather beneficial. “Patients come to me only because they googled something and found they had cancer.says David Levine, the author of this study. I thought, ‘Do all patients do this?’ And to what extent the Internet generates cyberchondria?“The notion refers to the anxiety caused by these searches on the Internet, as a hypochondria of modern times.
A more accurate diagnosis
To find out for sure, he decided to conduct his own research. It recruited 5,000 participants, who were asked to pick a small thumbnail with a list of symptoms. Then they had to imagine that someone close to them was suffering from it. They made a first diagnosis, then had access to the internet to look for other information and make a second one. At the same time, the researchers asked them to rate their level of anxiety. The latter did not change over the course of the experiment, which proves that cyberchondria is not based solely on these searches on the Internet. In contrast, the scientists found that the diagnosis was slightly more accurate when people looked at Google. “Many health care professionals believe that using the internet to research a symptom is a bad idea, this provides evidence that this is not the case.“, analyzes Dr. David Levine, in an article by The Guardian. “There’s nothing wrong with doing that, he adds, in fact, there would even be some good.“
Artificial intelligence, the future of medicine?
The author of the research wants to go further and study the ability of artificial intelligence to diagnose patients. “This next search uses an algorithm, trained thanks to all the resources accessible on the Internet“, he explains. Today, many scientists are working on medical applications of this technology. Some have even already emerged, such as at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif, in the Paris region, where it is used. in breast cancer screening.
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