Mayo Clinic is among the operators of “symptom-checker” websites that got poor marks for accurately diagnosing patients in a Harvard University Medical School study.
Harvard evaluated 23 websites that generate a list of possible diagnoses when online users enter their symptoms. Researchers chose which symptoms to enter and matching diagnoses based on scenarios used to train medical students.
In 34 percent of the 45 cases entered by researchers, the first result was the correct diagnosis, Harvard said in a news release.
The Mayo Clinic checker’s first result was the right diagnosis 17 percent of the time, Kaiser Health News reported.
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Rochester-based Mayo fared better when it came to listing the correct diagnosis among the top three results. It accomplished that in 59 percent of cases, ranking it sixth-best out of the 23 websites.
Based on the top-three metric, Mayo ranked behind sites like Symcat (71 percent) and Isabel (69 percent), and ahead of checkers such as Healthline (54 percent) and WebMD (51 percent).
Mayo performed better overall when researchers evaluated diagnoses in the top 20. In that case, the health provider included the correct diagnosis about 76 percent of the time.
Mayo’s Dr. John Wilkinson told Kaiser Health News that its goal is for the list of possibilities to include the accurate diagnosis, though the health system is “always trying to improve.”
Date: July 10, 2015