Symptomcheckers for patients in the russianspeaking segment of the internet: comparative analysis

Background. The revolutionary leap in Internet accessibility and the introduction of information technologies in all spheres of modern society have become significant reasons for the growing popularity of web applications providing personalized health information.

Aim. To conduct a comparative analysis of the online means of checking symptoms present in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.

Research methods. To achieve this goal on the basis of the information submitted in the review of the publications and results of queries to the search engines Google and Yandex a list of symptom checkers included in the study has compiled. As scenarios for comparative analysis, based on approved clinical recommendations, 3 situational tasks were formed with a description of the symptoms (reference clinical descriptions) of nosologies related to the pathology of the cardiovascular system, respiratory system and digestive organs.

Results. In the course of the work, the studied online means of checking symptoms were compared according to the following characteristics:

• the ability to enter information about the patient and the necessary symptoms;
• the results of the formation of a diagnostic conclusion;
• usability of navigation and overall impression of the interface;
• availability of additional features.

Conclusion. A comparative analysis of ten web-based applications for checking symptoms present in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet using «reference» descriptions of nosological forms indicates a sufficiently high quality of software products for this purpose. However, in order to obtain more reliable conclusions, we consider it appropriate to conduct a similar study using scenarios created based on the description of complaints from real patients of different age and gender groups.

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