MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ateev Mehrotra, M.D. Associate Professor Department of Health Care Policy Harvard Medical School MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Prior research has highlighted that physicians make diagnostic errors roughly 10 to 15 percent of the time. Over the last two decades, computer-based checklists and other “fail-safe” digital apps have been increasingly used to reduce medication errors or streamline infection-prevention protocols. Lately, experts have wondered whether computers might also help reduce diagnostic errors. In the study, 234 internal medicine physicians were asked to evaluate 45 clinical cases, involving both common and uncommon conditions with varying degrees of severity. For each case, physicians had to identify the most likely diagnosis along with two additional possible diagnoses. Each clinical vignette was solved by at least 20 physicians. The same cases were also evaluated using 19 symptom checkers, websites or apps that use computers that help patients determine potential diagnoses for what is wrong based on their symptoms. The physicians vastly outperformed the symptom-checker apps, listing the correct diagnosis 72 percent of the time, compared with 34 percent of the time for the digital platforms. Eighty-four percent of clinicians listed the correct diagnosis in the top three possibilities, compared with 51 percent for the digital symptom-checkers. (more…)