Your.MD is a UK-based startup that desperately wants to change the way we self-diagnose online. The new health service uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to tailor its recommendations. It hopes to avoid the hypochondria-triggering recommendations often unearthed by a simply Google search for symptoms. Your.MD uses data licensed from the National Health Service to provide possible causes for your symptoms and steps to remedy your illness. The artificial intelligence, or AI, baked into the app asks a number of follow-up questions – like a real doctor – to try and narrow down your results. The more information you give Your.MD and the more often you use the service – the better the diagnosis, its creators claim. However – it remains to be seen whether Britons feel comfortable revealing their symptoms to an app. CEO Matteo Berlucchi claims Your.MD provides "accurate, understandable and fast health information that is relevant." Your.MD hopes to gain popularity by proving faster than waiting days for an appointment with your GP and providing answers that are more accurate than a Google search. Despite being powered by NHS data, the UK startup quickly become a direct competitor with the taxpayer-funded NHS 111, the free non-emergency manned by healthcare professionals. “The solution we provide is scalable because of artificial intelligence, so that you can offer it to more and more people and make it better,” CEO Berlucchi told TechCrunch. “If we had developed an app that connects users to a real doctor, we would still be relying on the scarcest resource (doctors) thus making the service worse as it gets more successful.” “We are trying to build a personal health assistant that people can use to find out what to do when they are unwell. "In order to achieve this result without the support of human beings, you need to train an AI system to ask the same questions a doctor would ask and back the results up with reliable and clinically assured medical information." The artificial intelligence will analyse correlations in the users' symptoms and profiles. “The more people report the symptoms of the seasonal flu in a town, the higher the probability that the next user from the same place complaining about high fever and coughing will have picked up the same flu strain,” the Your.MD CEO added. The London-based startup is currently available for free on Android, iOS and online. Your.MD has already raised more than $5million – some £3.2million – from angel investors including Smedvig Capital. Plans to monetize the app reportedly include the addition of “value added services" including the option to talk directly with a doctor from within the app, book a test and more.
Your . MD is a new health app developed by UK - based startup that aims to change the way we self - diagnose online . The app service uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to tailor its recommendations by using data collected from the National Health Service to suggest possible explanations for your symptoms and steps to remedy your illness .