p2pnet.net News:- The Net is already usurping the power the mainstream media once had. Could the same thing now happen to doctors?

“Misdiagnosis is still a common occurrence in the medical profession despite all the tools available such as the blood tests and state of the art scanning equipment,” says The Daily Mail.

In fact, “Studies of autopsies have shown doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 per cent of the time,” it declares, going on:

“So millions of patients are being treated for the wrong disease. And the more astonishing fact may be that the rate has not really changed since the 1930s.”

But a team Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane selected three to five search terms from from 26 difficult diagnostic cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year and without knowing correct diagnoses, did a Google search .

Go no further, right? Yup.

The team noted the three most prominent diagnoses and then checked them with the correct diagnoses as published in the journal, says The Mail, and, “Google searches found the correct diagnosis in 15 (58 per cent) of cases,” it says, adding that Dr Hangwi Tang, who led the study, said, ‘Doctors adept at using the internet use Google to help them diagnose difficult cases’.”

With Google already locked rigidly into a pattern of milking the Net for advertising cash, think of the implications ;p

Also See:
The Daily Mail - Sony gropes Grouper, August 23, 2006

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 8:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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