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Web site lets patients narrow diagnosis on their own

A physician-created Web site lets consumers use decision-support software to obtain a list of problems they might have.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. June 10, 2002.

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His site is called EasyDiagnosis.com, but Martin Sturman, MD, wants to make clear that he's not diagnosing over the Web.

Instead, Dr. Sturman's site allows consumers to identify their symptoms and use medical decision-support software to quickly determine what might be wrong. The program asks users to pick one major physical complaint then answer 20 to 25 questions related to it. The system then spits out a list of possible diagnoses, ranking each in order of probability.

While the corporate-financed site MyDoc.com has been noted for its use of triage software, it's rare to find an individual physician using such a platform on the Web. But unlike MyDoc.com, no one at EasyDiagnosis.com is recommending a course of treatment or prescribing drugs, nor do users have e-mail access to a doctor.

"We're not diagnosing, we don't answer any medical question and we're not practicing medicine," said Dr. Sturman, CEO of MatheMEDics Inc., Media, Pa., which owns EasyDiagnosis.com and the decision-support technology the site uses. "The Web site is plastered with [those] disclaimers."

The site also prominently states that it is not meant to be used as a replacement for a physician, said Dr. Sturman, 75, an endocrinologist and internist who retired from practice in 2000.

Julie Brown Sturman, Dr. Sturman's wife and vice president and co-owner of MatheMEDics, said they call the site EasyDiagnosis.com because it lists probabilities of illness and because it's a "catchy name."

Consumers pay $10 for a 14-day subscription or $25 for an annual subscription to use the software, which is a consumer version of a system that MatheMEDics is trying to sell to managed care organizations. [...]