Saturday, February 4, 2012

Can your Facebook friends make a diagnosis?

Laypersons can seek help from their Facebook friends regarding medical diagnosis.
[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.
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Posted by Tony Mach Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2012
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