Clinical Cases and Images talks about how Google and Wikipedia is going to change medicine:

Google often beats UpToDate in finding what you are looking for. UpToDate information is far more reliable but Google is much broader.

Just see who brings visitors to BMJ website, Google leads it closest competitor by a multiple of nine (450,000 as compared to 50,000). Many young people believe that “if something is not on Google, it just doesn’t exist.” User-created content often tops the search results and most people never look beyond the first ten results on the page. There are dangers of seeing the world through “Google eyes” but this is a topic for another discussion.

Our patients use the search engines all the time, we, as physicians, cannot lag far behind. Of course, there are credibility problems to be solved but may be one day Google (or somebody else) will really be able to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.”

A recent BMJ editorial also comments.

I also previously wrote about how I incorporated Google into my daily routine.

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