Online medical diagnosis - harnessing a 'world-wide' audience

The expansion of interactive websites on the internet has led to a wide range of online tools in the health sector which assist with self diagnosis or to facilitate patient and clinician understanding. With the increasing recent use of crowd sourcing for fund-raising, suspect identification and IT tasking, it was only a matter of time until health also started to make use of the wider community for diagnosis, whether only a specific segment or a wider general call. With over 7,000 known rare diseases there is a large market of people who either suffer from an undiagnosed condition or one which has been misdiagnosed. Two such new emerging health websites are CrowdMed and FindZebra.

CrowdMed promotes its' function by stating:  

“Instead of relying on individual physicians, CrowdMed harnesses the collective intelligence of hundreds of Medical Detectives (MD’s) to produce astonishingly accurate diagnostic suggestions in just hours. As a CrowdMed Medical Detective (MD), you can use your personal experience, intuition, and online research skills to help solve the world's most difficult medical cases. You can not only win cash, prizes, and status, but also help save lives"

CrowdMed does not require a medical degree or any health qualifications at all. Participants on the website bet on a patient's diagnosis from lists of suggestions and the top three are given to a patient to discuss with their physician.

In contrast, FindZebra provides an index of articles from rare disease databases. The website contains a condition of use stating:

"FindZebra should only be used by medical professionals. Although the articles indexed by the system have been written by medical professionals or reviewed by medical associations, it is strongly recommended that, as a patient, you consult your local health care provider. FindZebra does not replace professional health care, and cannot be held responsible for erroneous use of the information provided through the system".

As with all website data, it is a case of buyer beware. Both these websites can be found by clicking the links below:

CrowdMed

FindZebra