Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
When It Comes To Getting A Diagnosis, Doctor Knows Best
Los Angeles Times: Your Phone May Be Smart, But Your Doctor Still Knows More Than An App
If you’re feeling sick and you want to know what’s wrong with you, there’s an app for that. But the diagnosis won’t be as accurate as the one you’d get from a doctor — not by a long shot. In a head-to-head comparison, real human physicians outperformed a collection of 23 symptom-checker apps and websites by a margin of more than 2 to 1, according to a report published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. (Kaplan, 10/10)
In other health technology news, there are plenty of gadgets coming out to help diabetes patients, whether they actually use them is another question —
Stat: Diabetes Care Is Getting Much More High Tech. Will It Matter?
Among the tech on the way from companies large and small: Socks designed to monitor diabetics’ feet for signs of injury. A bandage-like sensor that continuously measures their glucose levels. An app meant to predict how the sandwich they had at lunch is likely to affect their blood sugar. ... But there’s also reason for caution. Some of the new tech could carry high price tags, and even those that don’t will add expenses for patients already grappling with the soaring costs of insulin. Patients by and large haven’t embraced the most promising technologies already on the market. And devices that were touted as transformative in years past have fallen flat. (Robbins, 10/11)
