{"id":86,"date":"2005-11-29T16:10:19","date_gmt":"2005-11-29T16:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2005\/11\/29\/ask-google-for-a-diagnosis\/"},"modified":"2005-11-29T16:10:19","modified_gmt":"2005-11-29T16:10:19","slug":"ask-google-for-a-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2005\/11\/29\/ask-google-for-a-diagnosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Google for a diagnosis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Plenty has been written &#8212; both pro and con &#8212; about using Google as a source of medical information. People with rare diseases or those who have been ignored by the medical system have found it useful as a way of dealing with their symptoms and of finding others with the same disease. Doctors, meanwhile, find that they get bombarded by inane questions from hypochondriacs who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/chronicle\/archive\/2004\/02\/15\/LVGIU4R1OP1.DTL\">use the Web to convince themselves<\/a> they have some life-threatening disorder, and others warn that people who turn to the internet for help can often wind up with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cancer.med.umich.edu\/news\/archive\/arcinternet.htm\">inaccurate information<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Venture capitalist and polymath <a href=\"http:\/\/paul.kedrosky.com\">Paul Kedrosky<\/a>, however, points us to another emerging phenomenon &#8212; doctors and other health-care professionals using Google to help make a difficult diagnosis. He links to a letter from the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, in which the author describes how a medical researcher typed a list of symptoms and descriptions from a biopsy report &#8212; on a child with a skin ailment &#8212; into Google and <a href=\"http:\/\/paul.kedrosky.com\/archives\/002116.html\">arrived at the correct diagnosis, which was then confirmed by DNA testing<\/a>. It&#8217;s true that the Web is filled with a lot of mis-information, hoaxes and hype &#8212; but the right answer is often in there too somewhere.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plenty has been written &#8212; both pro and con &#8212; about using Google as a source of medical information. People with rare diseases or those who have been ignored by the medical system have found it useful as a way of dealing with their symptoms and of finding others with the same disease. Doctors, meanwhile, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2005\/11\/29\/ask-google-for-a-diagnosis\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ask Google for a diagnosis&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}