[caraffle]

Of course we have treatments and symptoms for many diseases. But many diseases present the same way. In fact many symptoms are a result of immune response, so naturally they are going to be difficult to differentiate. It's not because the physician doesn't know something. Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person.

Overtreatment and overdiagnosis is also a thing. How would you like receiving thousands of dollars of testing every time you visited the doc?

There will be bad docs like in any field but its presumptuous to think most don't know what they're doing.

[gambler]

>Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person.

I'm talking about an expert system. You enter symptoms. It asks you questions. Then it says something "there a high probability you have X and medium probability you have Y".

[caraffle]

And a physical exam? Who's going to listen to your lungs and heart, check out your throat, ears, nose, eyes? Those are invaluable in diagnosing even the most common illnesses.