Reuters

Before Roni Zeiger founded Smart Patients, an online community where patients can crowdsource medical information, he was a full-time doctor. Because of that, he can empathize with doctors who complain about patients who think they can diagnose their symptoms using the Internet.

“Maybe 10 years ago we were in a cultural state, as far as physicians were concerned, where I might say to you in a doctor’s room, ‘Oh shit, this patient just came in with twelve pages of print-outs that he found on Google and Web MD, and he thinks he’s got pellagra.’ I think we’re almost over that,” he said during an interview at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific on Wednesday.

Since Web MD was founded, he says, crowdsourcing has done a lot to improve the medical advice on the Internet. Even though there might be some bad information floating around on the web, people can consult with a broader community to get a second, third, or 30th opinion. “In well-functioning communities, if the question is, ‘How often should I get a CT scan to check for the recurrence of my kidney cancer?’ the 15 people who have looked at that question before and actually studied the data and talked to clinicians – it’s the micro-experts who lead the discussion.”