Laypersons can seek help from their Facebook friends regarding medical diagnosis.(via)
[Article in Danish]
Folkestad L, Brodersen JB, Hallas P, Brabrand M.
INTRODUCTION:
In contrast to Internet search engines, social media on the Internet such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. reach a large number of people, who are ready to help answering questions.
This type of information aggregation has been dubbed “crowdsourcing” i.e. outsourcing a task to a large group of people or community (a crowd) through an open call.
Our aim was to explore whether laypersons via Facebook friends could crowd source their way to a medical diagnosis based on a brief medical history, posted as a status update on Facebook.
MATERIAL AND METHODS:
The participants posted a brief case story on their Facebook profile and asked their “Facebook friends” to come up with possible diagnoses.
RESULTS:
The correct diagnosis was suggested in five of the six case stories, and the correct diagnosis was made after a median of ten minutes.
The quality of the responses varied from relevant differential diagnoses to very silly diagnostic suggestions.
CONCLUSION:
Based on this study, we believe that laypersons can use his or her “Facebook friends” to identify the need to see a doctor for their symptoms rather than relying on them to give them a specific diagnosis for their symptoms.
Pages
▼
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are most welcome! But please:
- No SPAM whatsoever, no supplements, no pharmaceuticals, no herbs or any other advertisements
- Absolutely no quack-doctors pushing their quack-BS websites (and if you are a quack, I will call you out)
- Be critical if you want to, but try to be coherent
Comments are moderated, because I am tired of Gerwyn-V99-The-Idiot and his moronic sockpuppets, and tired of the story of the two dogs, but I will try to publish everything else.
If you are not Gerwyn (and want to tell me something other than the story of the two dogs), then relax and write something! :-)