Search your symptoms via Google, end up with the most terrible disease and then make an appointment with the doctor in panic: Dr. Google’s diagnosis often results in more unnecessary stress than in reliable medical facts. But not always, as it turns out. New research suggests that research can be useful to detect ovarian cancer at an early stage.
A team of scientists at Imperial College London analyzed the search history of 235 British women. The subjects’ data was obtained with consent through Google Takeout – a tool that allows people to download a copy of stored information in various Google apps. Using the application’s health search filters, the researchers compared search results from ladies with and without ovarian cancer.
What seems? Women battling the disease looked for vague symptoms of the disease, such as weight loss, bladder problems and bloating, up to 360 days before their referral to a specialist. Google saw a spike in searches for urinary problems, an important warning sign for the disease, up to four months before a GP referral.
According to the researchers, these findings offer enormous potential in the field of cancer screening. “Doctor Google could be used in the future to detect ovarian cancer a year earlier. We hope that our research will stimulate interest in this new area of research,” says lead author Dr. Jennifer Barcroft in the medical journal BMC medicine.
Other studies have also supported the use of the search engine. In 2021, a Harvard medical school study of 5,000 adults suggested that researching your symptoms online can actually lead to a correct diagnosis, contrary to popular belief.
