Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 10, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: May 11, 2025 - Jul 6, 2025
Date Accepted: Sep 23, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The Relationship Between the Increasing Online Search Volume for Medical Symptoms and the Number of Outpatient Visits for the Same Symptoms in the US from 2004 to 2019
ABSTRACT
The seemingly endless amount of information available on the internet at the touch of a few buttons has increasingly served as a resource for individuals to find health information over the last 20+ years. Google Trends data shows that number of searches for the common primary care symptoms “cough”, “sore throat”, and “stomach pain” in the United States grew by 208%, 290%, and 490%, respectively, between 2004 and 2019. However, over the same time, United States population-adjusted outpatient visits for cough and sore throat decreased by 41.5% and 40%, respectively, and stomach pain visits remained unchanged. This suggests that, on a population level, people found online health information about some common, acute symptoms to be reassuring or informative enough to not feel the need to seek care from a primary health care provider. With the rapid evolution and availability of more detailed and personalized information from various large language models it is likely that internet search habits of users will continue to grow, and with it, continue to transform interactions with the healthcare system.
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