Is Google a good diagnostic tool for doctors?

Hello all,Before answering, please at least consider this
Guardian article...with its pros and cons.
[Extra credit to readers of BMJ article!!]Googling for a diagnosis-use of Google as a diagnostic aid: internet
based study
Hangwi Tang, Jennifer Hwee Kwoon Ng
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/november...
Aricle in Guardian article:
Doctors turn to Google for tricky cases [Friday November 10, 2006]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story...Excerpts:
Doctors in doubt about a patient's ailment could use Google to help them
reach a diagnosis, researchers said today.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..
Answer:
I think googling is a good place to LEARN being a doctor, because it really does help us find a lot of useful information. It also teaches an important skill: to differentiate between useful and not useful, evidence-based and without-evidence information.However it can never replace a doctor's brain for diagnosis. Many diseases have similar symptoms, with only subtle details differing. Even trusted websites such as emedicine.com have disclaimers stating that you should never use it as a diagnostic tool.

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Google can be used, but I feel it has limited appications. I always say if it was easy to be a doctor, all you have to do to diagnose a disease is to punch it in a computer. Doctors are too dependent on computers as it is. I found the best doctors are the wise ones. The ones that use their experience, rather thatn lab test to help their patients. Disease do not always react like the text book cases. There is also alot of bad information in the internet and many studies that has not been properly reviewed. I have used the internet to help doctors diagnose disease. But I consider every single doctor I did this for was of low quality.

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I would personally rather be treated by a physician that does not rely on just Google to try and make a diagnosis of a medical condition that I might have. In the past, whenever I went to a physician and he could not give me an accurate diagnosis, he would refer me to someone who specialized in certain fields. For example, I was referred to an endocrinologist when my family doctor could not bring my diabetes under control and was refer to a physician specializing in internal medicine when pancreatitis could not be properly diagnosed.
I am sure that physicians probably do use the internet to get information about certain conditions and the internet is a good tool to search with, but everything on the internet is not true. The physicians probably have a specific web site instead of just Google in general that they might use to find out this information. In other words.
I hope people do not start thinking they can themselves enter signs and symptoms into the search engine and find their own diagnosis and try to treat a serious condition on their own.

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The duchess and the slew put up a real interesting point.
Google is generated by info files however, and Slew probably
has the edge. Medicine should not be computerized in any
way, this would eventually delegate real time application of
care out of the system. Costs, time, and regard of ethics
may include over use of emergency information at service.
This new issue is whether doctors add more and more
cures and extend life beyond valid input. Generally this is
well studied, though this question may be the key that we
cannot change the environment of health, by using all of
the options.

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