Google Medical Search Encourages Hypochondriacs

Google has tweaked its search system so it automatically suggests potential health conditions if you type in a list of symptoms. That's a clever deployment of technologies, but I suspect it's also going to lead to a lot of speculative diagnoses and annoyed doctors.

Google's blog post announcing the new feature notes that "the list is not authored by doctors and of course is not advice from medical experts", but there's no similar disclaimer on the results themselves. The enhancement doesn't seem to have hit Google's Australian site yet, but I'd expect it to appear in the next few days.

Improving health searches, because your health matters [Official Google Blog]


    Dear god no. As a paramedic there is nothing more frustrating then rocking up at a patients house to have them say "I have this", and nothing you say will convince them otherwise, because google trumps a degree apprently.

    I have sat in a doctors office before and watched them use google to research a question I asked them

      I would stop seeing that doctor

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