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Online Diagnosis
Online diagnosis websites are all over the Internet, the most popular being WebMD.com. These sites allow you to enter your symptoms and it will give a diagnosis. This is a great service for minor sickness or rashes, but in no way does it substitute for a real doctor. The simply give you a starting point, and from there you can decide if you need to contact a real physician. It would not be hard for a program to confuse something more serious for a cold. Self-screening has its advantages, but nothing can substitute the knowledge of a real doctor.
One innovation I would like to see though is online chat with physicians. The online sites mentioned above generally involve questionnaires or you just search for causes of a symptom. If you were able to chat with a doctor, you could get more personalized advice yet still have the convenience of not having to go into a doctor’s office. With chat, you could also upload pictures that would help the doctor get your diagnosis even more correct. These chat sites could even allow the doctor to write you a prescription online (obviously nothing that would be potentially illegal or harming if it was in the wrong person’s hands).
