Doctors beat computer programs in making diagnoses

Doctors made the correct diagnosis more than twice as often as 23 commonly used online symptom checker websites, a new study has found. “In what we believe to be the first direct comparison of diagnostic accuracy, physicians vastly outperformed computer algorithms,” the researchers said.1

Each year millions of people go online to self diagnose. Many use symptom checker apps that let them enter their symptoms and receive a list of likely diagnoses, as well as advice as to whether …