Crowd Sourced Suckers

“What do you think of this?” writes a friend: …[A]n untraditional approach to medical diagnosis that is helping solve the country’s most difficult medical mysteries and creating real miracles. This is the description of something called CrowdMed, the latest version of getting doctors to provide services for free. Thus my short answer about what I think of it: not much. To be fair, and because I had a few minutes of free time, I went and checked it out. Patients submit questions about their medical condition(s), accompanied by varying levels of supporting detail, and “medical detectives” offer their opinions about possible diagnoses and/or other courses of action. Are all these “detectives” doctors? Um, no: Our Medical Detectives include medical students, retired physicians, nurses, physician assistants, chiropractors, scientists, naturopaths, and regular people who enjoy solving medical mysteries. We believe in the wisdom of crowds, not just individual experts, as you never know who will provide the insight that leads to a correct diagnosis or cure. We recruit Medical Detectives from a broad range of medical and non-medical backgrounds to assure cognitive diversity. Right. Because regular people, presumably with access to Wikipedia and perhaps Up To Date, in large enough numbers, are just as good as doctors; maybe better. Really? “You never know who will provide the insight that leads to a correct diagnosis”?? Even ...
Source: Musings of a Dinosaur - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: Medical Source Type: blogs