First ever head-to-head study reveals doctors are WAY better than symptom-checker apps at diagnosing illnesses (...for now, at least)

  • Symptom-checker apps are increasingly popular to get a quick diagnosis
  • Harvard researchers compared apps to doctors for the first time
  • Doctors were successful 84% of the time; apps only got 50% right

By Mia De Graaf For Dailymail.com

Published: 11:40 EST, 10 October 2016 | Updated: 11:40 EST, 10 October 2016

As we all know, it may not be long before computers and robots make us all redundant - from lorry drivers to surgeons.

In the field of medicine, precise algorithms could help avoid tragic misdiagnoses that could ultimately be fatal.

There has been a recent surge in symptom-checker apps programmed to match symptoms to illnesses, and suggest a course of action. And hundreds of millions of people Google their symptoms for a quick-fire diagnosis. 

But according to a new study, doctors are still unequivocally better at diagnosing illnesses than commonly used symptom-checker apps.

The research by Harvard Medical School is the first to measure human and virtual doctors against each other.

According to a new study, doctors are still unequivocally better at diagnosing illnesses than commonly used symptom-checker apps

According to a new study, doctors are still unequivocally better at diagnosing illnesses than commonly used symptom-checker apps

They found doctors correctly diagnosed hypothetical patients 84 per cent of the time.

Computers, however, only got it right 50 per cent of the time. 

In the study, published October 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine, 34 internal medicine physicians were asked to evaluate 45 clinical cases, involving both common and uncommon conditions with varying degrees of severity.

For each scenario, physicians had to identify the most likely diagnosis along with two additional possible diagnoses. 

Each clinical vignette was solved by at least 20 physicians.

Eighty-four per cent of clinicians listed the correct diagnosis in the top three possibilities, compared with 51 per cent for the digital symptom-checkers.  

The difference between physician and computer performance was most dramatic in more severe and less common conditions. 

It was smaller for less acute and more common illnesses.

'While the computer programs were clearly inferior to physicians in terms of diagnostic accuracy, it will be critical to study future generations of computer programs that may be more accurate,' said senior investigator Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor of health care policy at HMS.

Despite outperforming the machines, physicians still made errors in about 15 per cent of cases. 

Researchers say developing computer-based algorithms to be used in conjunction with human decision-making may help further reduce diagnostic errors.

'Clinical diagnosis is currently as much art as it is science, but there is great promise for technology to help augment clinical diagnoses,' Mehrotra said. 

'That is the true value proposition of these tools.' 

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