NCT03073746

Google Health Search Trial

Accuracy of Differential Diagnosis From Google Health Search and Impact on Clinical Encounters

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 300 (actual)
• Sponsor: Johns Hopkins University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

There are large differences in knowledge between patients and healthcare providers (i.e. physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners), and there is a strong interest on the part of both industry and academia to reduce the gap in knowledge between patients and healthcare providers. Currently, about 1 in 20 searches on Google are health related. Among internet users, 72% reported searching for health information, and among persons who use mobile phones, 31% of cell phone users and 52% of smartphone users have looked up health or medical information. Oftentimes, patients will search on Google or other search engines in order to find health conditions that explain their symptoms prior to visiting their healthcare provider. With the launch of Google's new health search tools for mobile devices (i.e. smartphones, tablets, etc.) it is important to understand how patients use these search platforms and what their effects are on clinical encounters. The main objective of this study is to understand the accuracy of differential diagnoses generated by Google searching; the investigators hypothesize that searching on Google using a tablet or mobile device will be more accurate than not using any search tool, and that the new health search experience will improve accuracy over the standard search platform.

Conditions

• Diagnoses Disease

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Health Search
OTHER	Standard Search

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-09-07
• Primary completion: 2017-08-09
• Completion: 2017-08-15
• First posted: 2017-03-08
• Last updated: 2019-04-16

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: United States