Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Medical Advice From Amazon’s Alexa

Many people research their symptoms prior to scheduling an appointment with a physician. With a virtual voice assistant such as Amazon’s Alexa, this can be done with minimal effort – there’s no need to open a laptop, tablet, or mobile device, let alone a book. For relatively minor health issues, this seems to make sense – after all, why waste time and money seeking treatment for a medical condition that can be effectively addressed at home?

Search engines can’t compete with physicians

Consulting the internet is nowhere near as good as discussing your symptoms one on one with an actual physician. First, before providing any information, a physician can take into account your unique circumstances in totality, which is something the internet cannot do. Second, it can be difficult to find an answer to a complicated question online, and even if you do, there’s no guarantee that it will be accurate. Health-related information on the internet tends to be far reaching and overly vague. For example, cancer may be listed as a possible cause of a common symptom. Even though this may be technically correct, it may also be highly unlikely, and therefore cause unnecessary alarm.

Conversely, given the general lack of specificity on the internet, a search engine might downplay an important symptom that should be brought to the attention of a physician. For instance, abdominal pain could have many causes ranging from indigestion and menstrual cramps to appendicitis and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). If you rely on a Google search to convince yourself that your symptoms are related to something you ate rather than IBS – a chronic condition that requires lifelong treatment – you may find that your discomfort persists and worsens.

Virtual voice assistants fall even farther short

With regard to finding health information, Alexa cannot effectively compete with search engines, even as problematic as those tools may be. For instance, if you seek an answer on a screen-based system, you’ll be presented with numerous options to scroll through. Also, in many instances, the source of any given information will be available for you to consider. Virtual voice assistants work differently. Designed to be helpful with basic questions, Alexa will provide you with a single answer, which is generally insufficient within the realm of the highly complex medical world. A licensed physician, on the other hand, has the education, training, experience, and judgment to help you successfully navigate it.

If you have health-related questions, don’t ask Alexa. Instead, contact or visit South Tampa Immediate Care. No appointments are necessary to see a physician at our walk-in clinic in Tampa, FL.