Feeling Sick? Use This Web Tool to Self-Diagnose Your Symptoms

When you’re feeling under the weather do you rush to the hospital? Google frantically?

Now, a web app provides a middle ground solution, offering the guidance of medical professionals with the ease of an online search. When you tell SymCAT your symptoms, it shows you the likelihood of different diagnoses. Think of it like a cross between a search engine and a symptom checker.

SymCAT was created by two Johns Hopkins medical students with backgrounds in engineering, Craig Monsen and David Do, who were frustrated that patients with common symptoms felt the need to go to the emergency room.

“It occurred to us that it could be useful for patients with minor conditions like back pain and sore throat, because they used Google and found a scary set of diseases like bird flue and malaria,” Monsen toldMashable. “We developed SymCAT for those patients.”

The duo decided to take a leave from medical school to work on the product last September and launched SymCAT in early 2012.

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