A new Australian study recommends doctors use Google to help diagnose difficult cases, despite indications it’s only 60 per cent accurate. Specialists at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane studied how effective the world’s largest and most popular search engine is for helping diagnose rare diseases.
The work, published online by the British Medical Journal, recommends specialists use Google because it is now a source of three billion journal articles, more than any specialist search engine.
In general, a diagnosis (plural diagnoses) covers a broad spectrum, or spectra, of testing in some form of analysis; such tests based on some collective reasoning is called the method of diagnostics, leading then to the results of those tests by ideal (ethics) would then be considered a diagnosis, but not necessarily the correct one.
In medicine, diagnosis or diagnostics is the process of identifying a medical condition or disease by its signs, symptoms, and from the results of various diagnostic procedures. The conclusion reached through this process is called a diagnosis. The term “diagnostic criteria” designates the combination of symptoms which allows the doctor to ascertain the diagnosis of the respective disease.
Typically, someone with abnormal symptoms will consult a physician, who will then obtain a history of the patient’s illness and examine him for signs of disease. The physician will formulate a hypothesis of likely diagnoses and in many cases will obtain further testing to confirm or clarify the diagnosis before providing treatment.
Medical tests commonly performed are measuring blood pressure, checking the pulse rate, listening to the heart with a stethoscope, urine tests, fecal tests, saliva tests, blood tests, medical imaging, electrocardiogram, hydrogen breath test and, occasionally, biopsy.
The word diagnosis is derived from the Greek words dia which means “by”, and gnosis which means “knowledge”. The verb is diagnose and a person diagnosing could be considered a diagnostician.
Several recent studies have shown the public often use the internet to self-diagnose, a trend that has alarmed many in the medical fraternity because of online inaccuracies.