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The rise of digital diagnosis

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Chances are we’ve all done it; that bug bite that doesn’t look normal, that nagging headache or pain in your stomach. Digital diagnosis is taking the place of the former family doctor. But is it a useful tool or a source of anxiety that’s turning us all into e-hypochondriacs?

For Sierra Watson, pregnancy was the start of what’s become a life of digitial diagnosing.

“Oh, I had this pain. Oh, I have heartburn. What can I do? I feel nauseous. What can I do?” said Watson.

Watson’s on-screen symptom sourcing only grew as her first child did.

“You type in non-raised rash and you get a million different things,” Watson said.

Chances are, you can relate. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Internet users have looked up health information online and 59 percent have done it within the past year. And of those, eight in 10 say they started their last health concern at a general search engine.

“The more information a patient has coming in, the more we can drill down and say what’s right for you,” said cardiologist Thomas Schleeter.

Schleeter has been a cardiologist for 13 years, so he’s seen the rise in self-diagnosing first-hand.

“We have patients every day who come in and they’re convinced they have what they have, much like I was convinced in my second year of medical school that I was pregnant. You know, I read the symptoms, I was tired in the morning, I was cranky, I thought I was pregnant. Turns out, I wasn’t,” said Schleeter.

Schleeter gets it. In fact, he encourages it. He says it helps to come armed with information about your symptoms, just as long as you don’t become an e-hypocondriac.

“If it starts bothering you to the point that what you’ve read is now disturbing your day, you’ve gone too far,” said Schleeter.

That’s not the case for Sierra Watson. In fact, digital diagnosing became crucial when her second baby, Owen, was born with two extremely rare conditions. They were so rare, the doctors sent them home with no information.

“Of course my first instict was to go online,” said Watson. “You can put in who it’s for, the gender, the age, all that.”

Watson found and researched the conditions, connected with parents around the world who have kids with the same thing, and, in turn, sped up the process of getting Owen the help he needs.

“If I didn’t have the internet I would know nothing really other than what the doctors told me, which is not a lot. I usually end up telling them more,” said Watson.

So, click away and take control of your health. But if you start becoming paranoid about a pimple or lose sleep over a sneeze, it may be time to step away from the screen.

But how accurate is digital diagnosing anyway? Not very. According to a study out of Harvard University, when patients checked symptoms online for the average illness, about 66 percent of the time, the first diagnosis was wrong.