Is there a Doctor in the Crowd? Diagnosis Needed! (for less than $5)

Cheng, James; Manoharan, Monisha; Zhang, Yan; Lease, Matthew

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/73637 Copy

Description

Title

Is there a Doctor in the Crowd? Diagnosis Needed! (for less than $5)

Author(s)

• Cheng, James
• Manoharan, Monisha
• Zhang, Yan
• Lease, Matthew

Issue Date

2015-03-15

Keyword(s)

• health informtics
• information technology and work
• distributed work

Abstract

We investigate the feasibility of crowd-based medical diagnosis by posting medical cases on a variety of crowdsourcing platforms: general and specialized volunteer question answering sites, and pay-based Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and oDesk. To assess the crowd’s ability to diagnose cases of varying difficulty, three sets of medical cases are considered. While volunteer channels proved ineffective for us, we discuss design limitations and opportunities for improvement. In contrast, Mechanical Turk workers without medical training not only correctly diagnosed easy cases, but also a previously unsolved case from CrowdMed involving extensive patient details. Likely due to varying expertise, MTurk workers and oDesk health professionals also differed in their willingness to provide uncertain diagnoses, diagnosis rationales, and reliance on personal experience with a disease to diagnose it.

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

iConference 2015 Proceedings

Type of Resource

text

Language

English

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/73637

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Copyright 2015 is held by the authors. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

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