A new search website called FindZebra has been designed to help the medical community find rare diseases by searching on symptoms.
In the late 1940s, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine coined an unusual phrase to describe unexpected diagnoses. “When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra,” he said. The phrase stuck and today, medics commonly use the term “zebra” to describe a rare disease, usually defined as one that occurs in less than 1 in 2000 of the population.
What is less clear, however, is how this tool will be used by the general public. The site comes with the forlorn message: “Warning! FindZebra is a research project and it is to be used only by medical professionals” .
FindZebra could obviously be a hypochondriac’s charter. On the other hand, that’s true of any medical dictionary.
The informed public are increasingly visiting their doctors armed with detailed information downloaded form the internet. Any move to improve the quality of this information must surely be of significant value.
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