Meet your new physician: Dr. Google

Hypothetically, Dr. Google exists, it can answer many questions if they set in a proper way. Unfortunately, it is a quite rare case when the inexperienced patients asking search engines like Google and Bing in a professional manner. In theory, physician Google able to diagnose and even save lives.

How can Dr. Google be a useful tool for in early diagnosis? As a search engine, of course. It easily can detect epidemics — the rising quantity of search phrases can be a signal, at least. So-called doctor Google can not heal cancer but it’s the good tool for earlier diagnosis and further screening.

In recent years, the search engines (Google or Bing, e.g.) have proven its utility, these are helpful in extracting useful medical information (if a patient describes symptoms online before diagnosis). By the way, Google claimed that its search engine could detect influenza epidemics early.

The Internet and the search engines become more smart and flexible. Often, the patients take needed action when they first posted on the internet, so, in a case of a certain type of cancer the chance of survival might have been increased by five per cent, say experts.

Of course, the main job of the physician is a diagnosis, any search engine is not able to substitute the visit to your doctor. It may sound wrong to leave diagnostics to computers, but their ability to interpret human behaviour is improving as they become even more powerful.