Benchmarking Triage Capability of Symptom Checkers Against That of Medical Laypersons: Survey Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Symptom checkers (SCs) are tools developed to provide clinical decision support to laypersons. Apart from suggesting probable diagnoses, they commonly advise when users should seek care (triage advice). SCs have become increasingly popular despite prior studies rating their performance as mediocre. To date, it is unclear whether SCs can triage better than those who might choose to use them.

Objective

This study aims to compare triage accuracy between SCs and their potential users (ie, laypersons).

Methods

On Amazon Mechanical Turk, we recruited 91 adults from the United States who had no professional medical background. In a web-based survey, the participants evaluated 45 fictitious clinical case vignettes. Data for 15 SCs that had processed the same vignet

SUBMITTER: Schmieding ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7991983 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature