When doctors mysteriously leave the room for 15 minutes after you’re done bitching about whatever your ailment is–they’re not playing golf or calling Hugh Laurie to exchange witticisms–they’re googling. Or, they should be, according to new research.

“Two Australian doctors have found that entering the symptoms of a tricky case into the internet search engine often results in accurately diagnosing the illness.

They put Google to the test by entering the symptoms of 26 difficult cases recorded in the New England Journal of Medicine into the search engine to see how accurate an aid to diagnosis it was. And in 58% of cases using the search engine led to the correct diagnosis.”

Well, that settles it for us. In 58% of times… what exactly were we paying the doctor for again? Oh yeah. Write the prescription, asshole. We’ve got internets.— MEGHANN MARCO

Doctors Turn to Google for Tricky Cases [Guardian]

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