Google’s a great resource for finding online information on just about everything, but the next time you’re feeling under the weather and need to visit a doctor, would you be comfortable with your physician “googling” your symptoms in hopes of identifying a particular malady?According to a report assembled by a number of Australian researchers and published on the British Medical Journal website, Google is increasingly being employed by doctors to diagnose diseases, Bloomberg.com reports. Google Screenshot As part of the study, physicians entered between three and five search terms—or symptoms—into Google’s Web search engine and found that it correctly diagnosed illnesses based on the terms in more than half the test cases, Bloomberg reports.The study, which was conducted by a number of physicians including Hangwi Tang of Australia’s Princess Alexandra Hospital, says that on average, doctors store about 2 million facts in their brains for use in examining patients’ symptoms and diagnosing illnesses, according to Bloomberg. The doctors said that Google can give those physicians access to some 3 billion articles that could be used to help make accurate diagnoses, Bloomberg reports. “Web-based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use,” the study reads, according to Bloomberg.Tang decided to conduct the research after an evaluation of a teenage male with a blood clot whose father was able to correctly diagnose the boy’s sickness before Tang, based on experimentation with entering the patient’s symptoms into Google, Bloomberg reports. As part of the research, the doctors selected 26 hard-to-diagnose cases that had been published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004, and entered three to five related symptoms into Google, according to Bloomberg. In 58 percent of the trials, Google correctly identified the corresponding illness—and that’s not counting a few instances in which the search engine correctly diagnosed a sickness but was not specific enough for the doctors’ guidelines, Bloomberg reports.The physicians did note, however, that googling for diagnoses will be more successful if the patient is experiencing clearly defined symptoms, according to Bloomberg.“We suspect that using Google to search for diagnosis is likely to be more effective with unique symptoms and signs that can be easily used as search terms,” the report reads, according to Bloomberg. “Searches are less likely to be successful in complex diseases with non-specific symptoms or common diseases with rare presentations.”The doctors also said that patients will likely be less successful in performing self-diagnoses than physicians who are aware of common symptoms and associated illnesses, Bloomberg reports.Clinical decision support programs are available to many physicians, but they’re not always free and they’re often very difficult to navigate, Tang said, according to Bloomberg. Google is familiar to most Web surfers, and it’s available free of charge.Related Link: Google Accidentally Sends Kama Sutra WormCheck out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Sponsored by Rimini Street Dear Oracle Cloud…I need my own space Access results from a recent Rimini Street survey about why enterprises are rethinking their Oracle relationship and cloud strategy. By Tanya O'Hara Nov 28, 2023 5 mins Cloud Computing brandpost Sponsored by Rimini Street How to evolve IT systems into innovation engines Today’s IT leaders are more than eager to modernize with best-fit cloud solutions that drive innovation and rapid business impact, but they need to do so with ROI-based solutions. By Tanya O'Hara Nov 28, 2023 4 mins IT Leadership brandpost Sponsored by Palo Alto Networks x Accenture Making sense of zero trust - why a managed SASE solution is the ideal option for enterprises Security leaders are turning to SASE as their preferred network security solution amid a new era of cloud-powered businesses working from anywhere. By CIO Contributor Nov 28, 2023 4 mins Network Security feature 8 tips for unleashing the power of unstructured data For most organizations, data in the form of text, video, audio, and other formats is plentiful but remains untapped. Here’s how to unlock business value from this overlooked data trove. By Bob Violino Nov 28, 2023 10 mins Data Mining Data Science Data Management Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe