Hypochondriacs?

Is Google feeding the frenzy?

Whether it’s checking up on your latest prescription meds or searching for images that match the rash that you can only see with a mirror, Google is already a great source of medical information. Did you know that one in twenty google searches are for medical information? That’s a lot of rashes. (I don’t want to know.)

One of the challenges of googling a symptom or medical term is that you couldn’t be sure of the validity of the information in the search result. Now, Google is upgrading the quality of results, providing data checking by real doctors and the Mayo Clinic.

Google product manager Prem Ramaswarm says: “We worked with a team of medical doctors (led by our own Dr. Kapil Parakh, M.D., MPH, Ph.D.) to carefully compile, curate, and review this information. All of the gathered facts represent real-life clinical knowledge from these doctors and high-quality medical sources across the web, and the information has been checked by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy.”

Gone are the days when a doctor could rely on the mystique of their qualifications – and that magical white coat – to intimidate patients. Gone are the days when patients had to suffer from obsolete information because their doctor lost interest in upgrading knowledge twenty years ago. People have been advocating for their own health for years by researching online. Now Google is upping the game with validated, expanded information that was previous accessible only via paid services and paid apps.

This is a boon to great doctors and a warning to the jerks.

Great doctors are already using the internet to stay current and aware of coming developments, and even to be aware of what their patients are being told. Conversations in doctor’s offices have evolved as patients have had access to information.

Google has impacted many facets of our lives, so it’s no surprise they’re impacting health services and our interaction with our own well-being. This release is a tiny hint of what is in the works at Google. Over a hundred staffers at Google are working on the nanotech project. Shades of sci-fi – can you image swallowing a pill full of magnetic nanoparticles that will identify trouble spots, cancerous cells and viruses in your body to allow diagnosis without expensive, intrusive testing?

How much longer before the nanoparticles can eliminate problem cells? I want the illness-killing nanoparticles. And when they figure that out, I want the ones that are anti-aging, and the ones that rebuild and renew our aging and damaged bodies.

Excuse me Google, could you get on with that before I get any older?