The NHS heads to Android

A new NHS Direct app has been released for Android which is designed to offer an assessment of your condition and to help you avoid calling them direct. Not a bad thing if my previous experiences are anything to go by.

"Get an assessment, info on your condition and advice on looking after yourself.

Our NHS Direct app allows you to check your symptoms if you’re feeling unwell. You can get an assessment, information about your condition and advice on how to look after yourself.

Getting health advice really couldn’t be easier! Simply work through one of our clinically tested health assessment tools by selecting your symptoms and answering some short questions about how you’re feeling."

Comments

[Dave Choy]

We have a similar thing in Australia called HealthDirect. In my experience all it does is freak people out and clog our emergency departments. The system is designed to *over* diagnose serious illness (who would dare take the responsibility of a dead child who had meningitis - the early signs of meningitis mimic a simple gastroenteritis). Seeing a real doctor cannot be supplanted by automated systems, and I can guarantee that thew one day someone has an adverse event based on one of these computer algorithms, these kind of self diagnosis tools will disappear.

[Neil]

Seeing a real doctor cannot be supplanted by automated system

Not yet, perhaps, but I can't see a reason why it could not happen? What makes a person special for this task?

[Dave Choy]

Computers can't perform clinical examination. You're right, one day we could probably build a reasonable robot clinician but that is a fair way off. IF we had the tech to have an automated system diagnose illness, we'd be using it in the field already. I suspect something like that would start off on a clinician's smartphone, and when accurate enough could be used in certain circumstances without a clinician.

If anyone knows of a program that can accurately diagnose illness now, I'd love to try it. At best ATM we have differential diagnosis programs, but these only seem to rattle off long lists of conditions