Search engine self-diagnosis and 'cyberchondria'

Dr Guido Zuccon researched the effectiveness of 'Dr Google.'

QUT research is aiming to improve search engines after finding online self-diagnosis of health conditions provides misleading results that can do more harm than good.

07 may 2015--Dr Guido Zuccon, from QUT's Information Systems School, found major search engines were providing irrelevant information that could lead to incorrect self-diagnosis, self-treatment and ultimately possible harm.

Dr Zuccon and colleagues from CSIRO in Brisbane and Vienna University of Technology, Austria, assessed the effectiveness of results from Google and Bing in response to medically-focused searches.

The rush to define ailments online is a significant chunk of internet searches, with Google reporting one in 20 of its 100 billion searches a month was for health-related information. Previous research found 35 per cent of US adults had gone online to self-diagnose a medical condition.

"People commonly turn to 'Dr Google' to self-diagnose illnesses or ailments," Dr Zuccon said.

"But our results revealed only about three of the first 10 results were highly useful for self-diagnosis and only half of the top 10 were somewhat relevant to the self-diagnosis of the medical condition."

The researchers showed participants medically-accurate images of common conditions like alopecia, jaundice and psoriasis and asked what the participant would search for in an attempt to diagnose it.

For jaundice, for example, queries including "yellow eyes", "eye illness", "white part of the eye turned green" were searched for.

"Because on average only three of the first 10 results were highly useful, people either keep searching or they get the wrong advice which can be potentially harmful for someone's health," Dr Zuccon said.

He warned it was also possible those seeking to self-diagnose online would experience "cyberchondria" - where subsequent searches could escalate concerns.

"If you don't get a clear diagnosis after one search you would likely be tempted to keep searching," Dr Zuccon said.

"So if you had searched for the symptoms of something like a bad head cold, you could end up thinking you had something far more serious, like an issue with the brain.

"This is partly down to searcher bias and partly down to the way the search engines work. For example, pages about brain cancer are more popular than pages about the flu so the user is driven to these results."

Dr Zuccon said search engines performed effectively if the name of the illness was already known.

"They are great for providing a wealth of information about illnesses and diseases, so if you search for something like jaundice you'll have a lot of useful results," he said.

"But our findings suggest it is not the best option for trying to find out what's wrong with you."

Dr Zuccon said further research was needed to identify how to improve search engines to provide searchers with the most effective results.

"We are currently developing methods for search engines to better promote the most useful pages," he said.

"For example, along with colleagues at the CSIRO, we have developed algorithms that return pages that consumers find easier to understand, while maintaining the relevancy and correctness of the medical information presented."

Provided by Queensland University of Technology

'Cyberchondria' from online health searches is worse for those who fear the unknown

Turning to the Internet to find out what ails you is common, but for folks who have trouble handling uncertainty, "cyberchondria" – the online counterpart to hypochondria – worsens as they seek answers, a Baylor University researcher says.

09 oct 2013--"If I'm someone who doesn't like uncertainty, I may become more anxious, search further, monitor my body more, go to the doctor more frequently—and the more you search, the more you consider the possibilities," said Thomas Fergus, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. "If I see a site about traumatic brain injuries and have difficulties tolerating uncertainty, I might be more likely to worry that's the cause of the bump on my head."

His study is published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

As if fearing a catastrophic disease or injury isn't bad enough, doubts about health—unfounded or not—can trigger worries about potential medical bills, disability and job loss, he said. And that can lead to even more Googling, obsessing, doctor visits, unnecessary medical testing and distress.

Prior research shows that approximately eight of 10 American adults seek medical information on the Internet.

Fergus sampled 512 healthy adults, with a mean age of 33.4 years. Fifty-five percent were women, 59 percent had at least a two-year degree, 53 percent worked at least 20 hours weekly, and 67 percent were unmarried.

He used several measures, among them a scale in which people assessed such statements as "I always want to know what the future has in store for me"; a health anxiety inventory, in which—regardless of their actual health—they responded to such statements as "I spend most of my time worrying about my health"; and a scale assessing how searches for online health information affected respondents' anxiety.

While fearing the worst when it comes to health is not new, the online glut of medical information – some of it from questionable sources – may be more disturbing than that contained in medical manuals that people consult or obtain directly from a doctor, Fergus said.

"When you look at a medical book, you might not see all the possibilities at once, but online you're presented with so many," he said.

Provided by Baylor University

Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search

by Ryen White; Eric Horvitz
30 nov 2008--The World Wide Web provides an abundant source of medical information. This information can assist people who are not healthcare professionals to better understand health and disease, and to provide them with feasible explanations for symptoms. However, the Web has the potential to increase the anxieties of people who have little or no medical training, especially when Web search is employed as a diagnostic procedure. We use the term cyberchondria to refer to the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web. We performed a large-scale, longitudinal, log-based study of how people search for medical information online, supported by a large-scale survey of 515 individuals’ health-related search experiences. We focused on the extent to which common, likely innocuous symptoms can escalate into the review of content on serious, rare conditions that are linked to the common symptoms. Our results show that Web search engines have the potential to escalate medical concerns. We show that escalation is influenced by the amount and distribution of medical content viewed by users, the presence of escalatory terminology in pages visited, and a user’s predisposition to escalate versus to seek more reasonable explanations for ailments. We also demonstrate the persistence of post-session anxiety following escalations and the effect that such anxieties can have on interrupting user’s activities across multiple sessions. Our findings underscore the potential costs and challenges of cyberchondria and suggest actionable design implications that hold opportunity for improving the search and navigation experience for people turning to the Web to interpret common symptoms.