Check Your Symptoms Online Using Diagnosio.com
A man couldn’t see, so he made a light bulb. A man was always late, so he built a car. Then, a man wanted to know everything, so he built the internet. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind (hopefully) that technology has changed our lives for the better and will keep on doing so. Today, you’re about three seconds away from any information you need. You no longer have to be a plumber to fix leaking pipes — you just need to watch a five-minute how-to video. We use technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in virtually every walk of life from microwaving our breakfast to catching up with our friend from another part of the world. So why not use it for what matters the most? Why not use it for our health?
Now, we’ve all been there when we googled some of our symptoms, and we’ve all felt the potential perils of it. Alongside becoming too dependent on it and trusting a website over their doctors, people also usually type in a vague symptom that can end up being a million different things. Of course, we tend to stick with the worst one, and it sounds damning all the time. So apparently, we shouldn’t use it then?
The thing is, there’s a general distrust towards the use of AI in medicine. People usually evaluate doctors as less competent if they rely on statistics and AI more than they do on their intuition. Here, we’ll look into why that shouldn’t be the case, and how you should use Diagnosio, a virtual doctor tool that will allow you to check your symptoms online. Let’s get to it.
Should We Trust AI?
There are several reasons why people haven’t yet jumped in on the “AI in medicine” bandwagon. The number one reason is distrust. Whenever we come across online symptom checkers or virtual doctors, most of us have the same doubts — How can it tell? What does an app know about a headache? Well, it turns out they know more than us!
In 2017, some research carried out in the United Kingdom showed a change in the trend of (over)trusting doctors. Both doctors and AI have gone through thousands of triage diagnoses, and the results showed that doctors would get a correct diagnosis in 77.5% of the situations, while AI did it with a percentage of 90.2%! Similarly, IBM Watson went over 1,000 expert diagnoses of cancer patients. In 30% of those diagnoses, Watson came up with treatment alternatives that the experts failed to recognize.
Misleading Stats?
Another problem people have with giving virtual care a go over visiting a doctor is their distrust of statistics. The thing is, although most of us do agree that symptoms are symptoms (hence, not a unique experience), we innately believe they are not. There are many studies and books written about the phenomenon of self-uniqueness. That’s a perception that we believe something is unique to us, even when it isn’t. Basically, our headache is unlike someone else’s headache. Spoiler alert: it is not so.
The simple nature of numbers tells us that statistical models have a strong superiority over human intuition when it comes to coming up with accurate conclusions. For instance, Diagnosio has a database of thousands upon thousands of well-documented diagnoses, and it compares them to over a million of previously made queries. No doctor can do that; it’s a simple fact.
The problem is, we’re afraid that AI will consider us an inanimate object (and try to “fix” us like we try to fix a computer bug). This way, it will completely disregard the “unique” part of us and therefore, come up with a wrong solution. While you may not find this to be the nicest and the most humane way of thinking, here’s the bottom line: people get diagnosed with diabetes because their body behaves in exactly the same way as the bodies of millions of people with diabetes.
Is AI More Accurate?
Although you might see AI as something that won’t have human empathy and will neglect all of your symptoms, the truth is that the machine will offer a more accurate diagnosis. There are already several ways AI is present in healthcare, and it’s going to become more prevalent as time goes by.
At the end of the day, a computer machine will be able to take into account more factors than a human doctor can. For example, a recent study has shown that AI diagnoses pulmonary tuberculosis with a specificity of 100% and sensitivity of 95%.
After all, you can’t argue that machines are there to do what we can’t, and there’s no reason why we should avoid them when it comes to our health. And now, with the help of the internet, you can check your symptoms yourself and receive an accurate, well-researched diagnosis on your own.
Diagnosio Symptom Checker
As we’ve already established, Diagnosio has gone through millions of queries and has thousands of various diagnoses in its database. This way, it can accurately (more accurately than a human, as we’ve seen) address your symptoms, weigh them up, and come up with your diagnosis. The power of this app lies in the fact that it doesn’t only contain the most common illnesses you can come across. If you have a rare disease, perhaps one that doctors might not think about, Diagnosio will be able to recognize it.
But before we go into how it actually works and how you should utilize it, let’s talk about when you should do it.
Self-Treatment and Diagnosio
If you’ve gotten confused by this point and believe there’s no need for doctors and hospital visits, you’re way off. The thing is, just because you have an app that can propose diagnoses that match your condition, that doesn’t make you a doctor yourself. The whole point of Diagnosio is to propose a a list of possible diagnoses and find out what your course of action should be for each and every proposed diagnosis. If your condition is nothing to be messed around with, the app can recommend, say, urgent care or an emergency room visit within the next 24 hours.
Diagnosio is there to provide you with a swift diagnosis. Once you do go to a doctor (or you have a virtual doctor visit, wink-wink), your discussion with them will be a lot easier. You’ll know your starting point better, and you’ll be able to better convey your health information. Sometimes, it’s just a headache that goes away after a day, but sometimes, you need to contact your health care provider. That’s where Diagnosio comes in.
Using Diagnosio
Before we continue, remember that this is an aid in getting your health fixed not a substitute for professional medical assistance and expertise.
You can utilize Diagnosio via your browser by simply visiting the website and starting the Diagnoser. You can access the website on your laptop, mobile phone, or tablet. Additionally, there’s also a mobile app for Android and iOS users, so you can check your health on the go. Once you sign up, you will have a one-day free trial membership. This way, you can try it out for free (no credit card information needed) and see how it all works first-hand. Diagnosio is purposefully made to be easy to use, and you’re three steps away from getting an accurate diagnosis.
1. Describing Your Symptoms
This is the only step where you have to do the legwork. Once you begin the process of getting your diagnosis, you will have to fill in some information about yourself. Apart from your contact information (your email address), you will need to reveal your age, your gender, if you’re pregnant (that’s for the ladies, obviously), and what region you live in. Additionally, the app will also ask you what regions you’ve been to recently. All of these seemingly trivial pieces of information are crucial for Diagnosio to come up with the best possible results. The way it works is it goes through its deep-learning database and checks how your unique information may affect the diagnosis.
The last part in this section is describing your symptoms. It is of great importance that you do this correctly. Don’t rush your way past this section as correctly describing your symptoms is the only way for you to get a correct diagnosis. Sit back and think about each answer, and then select the option you feel is the most accurate.
Aside from the symptoms themselves, you will also have to provide information on the intensity of the pain you feel as well as the location or, to be more precise, the position of it. Upper central stomach pain is not the same as upper left stomach pain. As you go through your symptoms, the app will help you along. It will suggest some of the most common pains and discomforts that go with the symptom you’ve already typed in. This way, you’re going to describe the pain more accurately.
2. Symptom Checker
After you’ve done your part and provided Diagnosio with your personal information and symptoms, it will go through its database of illnesses and compare your symptoms with previous patients. Basically, it will compare them with all the different illnesses and known symptoms that come with them. As a result, it will come up with a diagnosis in the shape of a list of diseases that best match your condition.
You receive a structured table of the potential diagnoses. Obviously, you might have only one of these illnesses, several, or all of them (hopefully not). You may not be able to tell which one is “yours.” However, the table will also tell you how likely you are to suffer from these illnesses (i.e., how much you fit the profile). Additionally, you will also receive links to highly-trusted sources for each diagnosis. With these links, you can learn more about the illness and inform yourself on the issue. You will also be able to find out which diagnosis feels the most accurate from the list provided.
3. Making an Emergency Call
Obviously, this last step doesn’t happen always and is subject to the list of symptoms we’ve talked about above. If there’s an urgency in your condition, the app will inform you of it, and it will advise you to visit the nearest emergency room (often, it will recommend that you contact your health care provider).
Helping Others
When you decide to sign up for the Diagnosio membership plan, you will not only be helping yourself by bringing a doctor to your home, but you will also be helping others without doing any extra work. Every tenth examination you take with Diagnosio, they will donate these funds to developing similar services to people who live in areas of the world where health care is not up to contemporary standards.
Summary
Although people still express distrust of the utilization of AI in medicine, there is no reason why we shouldn’t use technology to help us get healthy. With Diagnosio, you will be able to receive accurate diagnoses whenever it suits you. You no longer have to wait for an appointment to find out what might be going on with you.
However, make sure you don’t use Diagnosio as your only source of medical assistance. This is something to help you along and aid you in your communication with your doctor. For instance, you can take your list of possible diagnoses to the doctor, and they will have an easier job helping you.
Pulmonary tuberculosis stats: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5819974/
Percentage of correct diagnosis and Watson cancer accuracy: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/46/4/629/5485292