This fun cartoon about a Doctor offering his Patient a ‘second opinion” from the Internet (HatTip: Denise Silber on Linkedin) got me thinking.
With 194 Million Americans saying that they looked online for health information within the past year (Jan 2014) and Google even trialling free* video chats with Doctors to citizens who google health terms on their Android smartphones how long will it take for us to recognise that in 2015 the first opinion is now achieved by entering symptoms into a search engine on the device we carry in our pockets 24/7 and the Doctor office appointment (that many of us will wait 2+ weeks for?) is at best providing a second/third/fourth opinion?
*** *** Update: 16 October 2015 *** ***
An interesting headline stat from a poll of Doctors on the Sermo network:
