Don't Do It to Yourself... Until You Read This First

Today, we live in a do-it-yourself (DIY) world -- travel agents are no longer necessary to book airline tickets, your next home may be found via the cyber highway, and no need to pay a guitar teacher for lessons when watching YouTube videos can make you concert-ready. What about health care? DYI Diagnostics Patients have taken diagnostic matters into their own hands for decades, with digital thermometers, over-the-counter remedies, and even home pregnancy tests. Today, there are many diagnostic apps that cater to medical health. Have a rash? Log onto Klara.com: Upload a photo of your boo-boo; set-up an account; and a dermatologist will provide a remote consultation. There are now even apps that work with your smartphone to create EKGs that can be sent to a medical doctor to provide a diagnosis. DYI Don'ts Recently, two companies -- SmileCareClub and Crystal Braces -- launched as mail order orthodontics businesses. The companies sell Invisalign knockoffs. SmileCareClub creates a sequence of plastic aligners from impressions consumers can take at home. For an initial fee of $95, the "patient" receives a kit with instructions on how to take her own dental impressions and upload photos of her teeth from a smartphone (Note: Selfies are for slumber parties not for straightening teeth.) Consumers also are asked to sign a pledge that they have seen a dentist and had X-rays taken. While neither of these companies asks to see the X-ray images, a dentist on staff determines...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news