Google a Diagnosis: Search Engine May Help With Difficult Cases

Writing for Bloomberg, Martijn van der Starre reports on study where doctors performed a Google search for 26 difficult-to-diagnose cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, using three to five search terms. They included conditions such as the human form of mad-cow disease. The searches found the correct diagnosis in 58 percent of the cases. That percentage excludes some cases where Google found the correct diagnosis and wasn't specific enough.

See also Pandia Search Engine News for a review of specialized search engines for health information.[JH]