Question

 

PHC 281

“Historically, people have always tried to answer their health questions at home and made personal choices about whether and when to consult a clinician. Many have now added the internet to their personal health toolbox, helping themselves and their loved ones better understand what might be ailing them.” Fox, S., & Duggan, M. (2013). Health online 2013. Health, 2013, 1-55.

Discuss why some people go online to get diagnoses instead of going to a doctor/health professional. 

Answer 1

In this era of technology, where everything can be done by just a click and a swipe, life has become very easy going for us. Even the healthcare systems and facilities are not left untouched. The world is shifting towars model that emphasize self care managemen. There are plenty of reasons for this, it is easy going, the problems faced in traditional healthcare facilities are being solved, self diagnosing and treating using online platforms are ofcourse cheaper, less time consuming, easily affordable for people with no health insurance.

And I must not stop myself from this, this easy availability of plethora of information on infinite diseas, their signs and symptoms , treatment , prevention no doubt is making things simpler. BUT, are we looking at the bigger picture??

Who is providing this data? are these data authentic enough? is human life becoming so cheap tha we our ready to risk ourselves our beloved ones on anonymous sources?

Internet ha sgiven each one of us so much of freedom that we can put up any sort of data we want on web on anytime. Is there anybody to monitor what data is being put up? are those information reliable? our those souces valid??

These are the questions we need to ask ourselves the next time we go on reading any article on any health related issues.

no doubt the artificial intelligence is taking over everysector. But also medical science???

A medical proffessional spends about a decade of his liftime study the physiology pathology and treatment, practices for another decade lof his life and thn becomes a medical professional.

yes the conventional system is costlier, and more time consume , has physical barriers, we definetly need to work on that, but diagnosing and treating self online must not become our solution too this problem.

nearly one third of the population has started avoiding doctors and reach to online sources for their ailments,

even when they reach upto medical proffessional they have a " condition of doubt" on the doctor.

Avoiding medical care may result in late detection,reduced survival, and potentially preventable suffering.

An online source can not definetly examine somebody physically, it can not help to see the various asymtomatic disease which can turn out to be lethal later, only a medical proffesional can do that.

its hight time that we should work on the actual loop holes, make medical health care easily available to eache one, lessen the barrier between a doctor and patient and improve trust on our doctors.