Dot Com v. MD: Health Advice & Resources Online

Three-quarters of Internet users in the U.S. are going online to answer questions about their health. But with hundreds of thousands of health websites, separating the useful and reliable from the questionable and potentially harmful can be a tough task. We look at how Americans are using online health resources and how they're changing the doctor-patient relationship.

Comparing Online Symptom Checkers & Their Medical Diagnoses

Do an Internet search for "symptom checker" and the top results are likely to be WebMD, Mayo Clinic and Drugs.com. Health websites like these yield a list of possible diseases and conditions that match at least one of your symptoms selected from a drop-down menu of factors. Though all include disclaimers about the medical advice given and recommend calling 911 if symptoms worsen or persist, the variety of possible diagnoses can vary widely among the websites.

For example, a search for the possible cause of moderate knee joint pain in a 25 to 34-year-old male turns up eight to 28 different results:

In another case, trying to diagnosis heart palpitations in a 45 to 54-year-old female can come back with a handful of responses or 17 responses:

Ear pain in a child, however, result in more similar diagnoses across the websites: