Self-Diagnosis Fails 66% of the Time, Study Finds

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A Harvard Medical study casts light on the dangers of self-diagnosing through symptom checker websites.

Researchers from the US Harvard Medical School assessed leading symptom checkers in websites like the Mayo Clinic and the WebMD to get to the bottom of how accurate these online tools are for diagnosing any ailments.

For their study, the researchers inputted a standardized list of symptoms into 23 online symptom checkers. The list of symptoms or standardized patient vignettes are acquired from clinical sources and come attached with the correct diagnosis.

The findings published in The British Medical Journal found that in the 23 online symptom checkers, the researchers found only 34 percent gave the correct diagnosis and about 58 percent listed the correct one within a top 20 list of possible ailments. The checkers also had a 57 percent success rate of providing the appropriate triage advice. The checkers scored high at 80 percent when it comes to emergent cases, but only 55 percent in non-emergent cases.

The sudden boom of self-diagnosis through the Internet urged the researchers of the study to analyze whether the diagnosis and advice from such sites are helpful and accurate.

"Users of these tools should be aware that their performance is not perfect by any means, there's often inaccuracies or errors," lead author of the study, said in a report by Diabetes Insider.

"[They are] better than just a random Internet search, but they are not a replacement for going to the doctor and getting a full evaluation and diagnosis. They are simply providing some information about what might be going on with you," he said.

Mehrotra added that it is imperative for patients to go to a doctor immediately if they are experiencing any kind of ailment and that symptom checker results taken from the internet should be taken with a grain of salt.

"These tools may be useful in patients who are trying to decide whether they should get to a doctor quickly, but in many cases, users should be cautious and not take the information they receive from online symptom checkers as gospel," he said in the report by Daily Mail.

According to Bustle, the highest rating symptom checker sites in the US include Healthy Children, Steps2Care and Symptify.

CBS reports that the researchers will further look into symptom checkers and whether users truly heed the opinion of the online tools,such as where or when to seek medical aid.