Giving Compass' Take:

• Alice Park discusses how online diagnosis tools can reduce stress on an overburdened healthcare system, but they can also misdiagnose illnesses. 

• How can these tools be improved to relieve stress on the healthcare system? How else can medical information and advice be provided accurately and at scale? 

• Find out how we can reduce barriers to telemedicine designed to bring high-quality healthcare services to people in need. 

Online symptom checkers are the digital version of the DIY doctor. Plug in what’s ailing you — headache, stomach pains, weird skin rash — and you get a list of what’s (likely) causing the problem.

The key word is ‘likely.’ Depending on which version you use, that list could be spot on, or it could lead you astray — luring you into a false sense of reassurance that nothing is wrong, or sending you into a spiral of anxiety about a serious, and possibly even fatal, condition.

Given that online searches are the default for almost everything people are curious about, physicians have come around to the idea that their patients will be doing some sleuthing on their own.

When researchers put the leading symptom checkers to the test in a 2015 study, they found that they were about 51% accurate. In terms of whether the symptom checkers could correctly advise people on whether they could wait out their complaints because they weren’t serious, or needed to see a doctor or go to the emergency room immediately, they did slightly better, matching the doctors’ advice 57% of the time.

If people use a symptom checker before seeing a doctor, they may already have an idea of what may be wrong with them and can research those conditions in order to have more directed questions ready for their doctor visit.

Such homework might also help to reduce the burden of overtreatment in the U.S. health system, by acting as a first-line triage system to keep those who may not need medical attention out of hospitals and doctors offices, and encourage those who need care to seek it right away.

Read the full article on online diagnosis by Alice Park at TIME Magazine.