Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
When It Comes To Getting A Diagnosis, Doctor Knows Best
If you鈥檙e feeling sick and you want to know what鈥檚 wrong with you, there鈥檚 an app for that. But the diagnosis won鈥檛 be as accurate as the one you鈥檇 get from a doctor 鈥� 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,聽whether they actually use them is another question聽鈥�
Among the聽tech on the way聽from聽companies large and small: Socks designed to monitor diabetics鈥� feet for signs of injury. A bandage-like sensor that continuously measures their glucose levels. An app meant to聽predict how the sandwich they had at lunch is likely to affect their blood sugar. ... But there鈥檚 also reason for caution. Some of the new tech could carry high price tags, and even those that don鈥檛 will add expenses for patients already grappling with the soaring costs of insulin. Patients by and large haven鈥檛 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)