Good news for those of us who use symptom checker apps and always come up with terrifying results: A new study has found that these apps have an extremely low rate of getting diagnoses right.
The study included 27 symptom checker apps, including well-known ones from WebMD and the Mayo Clinic, and found that on average, these apps were only correct 36% of the time.
Fortunately, they were a bit better at determining whether or not a person should go to the emergency room.
Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to a doctor if you have worrying symptoms - just that you shouldn't totally freak out when an app tells you what it might be.
Read on to learn more about symptom checker apps’ tendency to misdiagnose (and throw so many of us into needless panic).
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