You can search the internet on how to survive in space, but that does not make you an astronaut. You have opinions about cricketers, but you would not be coaching Virat Kohli on what to do on the pitch. You have opinions about geopolitics but has that ever made you the external affairs minister?So why do most of us feel like being a doctor is as easy as an internet search or AI query? A specialised physician in India trains for more than 13 years, and yet a 0.13-second search result is consulted over them.A qualitative study published in BMC Medical Education examined what both physicians and patients consider critical in medical consultations. The findings reveal a telling disconnect: while physicians focus on accurate diagnosis and treatment strategy, patients and relatives prioritise prognosis (“How quickly will I get better?” ) and lifestyle advice.The doctor is trying to figure out what is wrong. The patient is trying to figure out when it will end. These are not the same conversation.
Munchausen by Google
In 2009, British orthopaedic surgeon EJ Griffiths coined the term ‘Munchausen’s Syndrome by Google’ to describe a patient who used Google Images to fabricate a radiograph and deceive multiple specialists.What researchers now call cyberchondria is its accidental, mass-scale cousin: not deception, but misplaced certainty. I use the phrase ‘Munchausen by Google’ in this broader, colloquial sense, to describe the millions of patients who arrive at consultations not with forged X-rays, but with a self-diagnosis they found between midnight and 2am and now cannot be talked out of.Seven in ten internet users search their symptoms online. In India, that number has an added curse : a deep, culturally specific distrust of the medical system itself. Research published in the International Journal of Indian Psychology found that distrust of healthcare professionals and the belief in self-diagnosis drive the reliance on online health information, and that the cultural stigma around mental health further pushes people toward internet sources rather than doctors. Nearly 22% of the Indian adult population studied may be experiencing significant distress and impairment due to compulsive, health-related internet use.Dr. Sanjana Rai, consultant in Internal Medicine at SPARSH Hospital, Bangalore, sees this daily. “Many patients come after reading symptoms from online platforms and already assume they have a very serious condition,” she says. “The consultation is not only about the medical diagnosis — it is also about correcting incorrect information, calming the patient, and explaining the actual condition in a simple and practical way.”What doctors wish patients understood is that this is not merely an anxiety problem. It becomes a physical danger the moment the self-diagnosis leads to self-medication, and in India, where pharmacies dispense medicines with the ease of a grocery shop, that concern is very well-founded.Consider dengue, a disease Indians are well-acquainted with given our tropical location and water stagnation problems. Because dengue begins as a fever with body ache, most people mistake it for a common viral fever and reach for Aspirin or Ibuprofen. So did the mother of a 15-year old boy in Delhi.She gave him the tablets to bring down his fever. What she did not know was that these are blood thinners. The dengue virus attacks platelets, the blood cells responsible for clotting, and the blood thinners lead to internal bleeding for her son. Doctors also call this Dengue Shock Syndrome. Her son spent days in the emergency ward post the self-medication, suffering from consequences a consultation would have prevented.A 2025 paper in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics noted that while the “Google-informed patient” can, if handled well, be an opportunity for deeper engagement, the risks of online misinformation –– diagnostic errors, health anxiety, and unsafe self-treatment –– are well documented. One additional layer Indian doctors frequently point out: much of the online health content is sourced from Western databases that do not account for the demographic and lifestyle differences of Indian patients.
The antibiotic problem
India has the highest antibiotic consumption in the world. A study based in low-income urban Delhi found that 24.6% of respondents admitted to self-medicating with antibiotics, most commonly for fever, pain, cough, and headache. The most common antibiotics used without prescription: amoxicillin, azithromycin, ciprofloxacin. Reasons cited: previous successful experiences, convenience, cost-saving.
The logic is understandable but the consequences are more often than not ignored.Antibiotic resistance, the process by which bacteria evolve to survive drugs designed to kill them, is not a future problem. When antibiotics are taken for viral infections they cannot treat, or stopped midway through a course because the patient feels better, or switched based on what a neighbour used last year, the bacteria learn. Dr. Rai has seen the cost of this firsthand. “Self-medication may give temporary relief,” she says, “but it can hide warning indicators and create serious complications.” In cases she has treated, repeated self-medication delayed the correct diagnosis entirely — patients arrived only after their condition had worsened, with longer recovery times and higher treatment costs as a result.
The lab report in the WhatsApp group
There is a peculiarly Indian ritual that doctors have quietly come to dread. A patient gets a blood report, and instead of going back to the doctor, they photograph it and send it to a family WhatsApp group. Within minutes, an uncle who once stood outside a NEET centre, a cousin who “studies biology in Class 12,” and someone’s aunt who “knows a doctor” have offered diagnoses. By the time the patient walks into the clinic, they have already been told they have diabetes, or kidney failure, or a thyroid problem – or, conversely, that there is nothing wrong and the doctor is “just trying to make money.“In a culture where family involvement in healthcare is seen as love and attentiveness, the clinical cost of this is rarely acknowledged. The problem compounds when the crowd-sourced opinion contradicts the physician’s assessment. Research on cyberchondria notes that once a patient becomes convinced of their self-diagnosis, it becomes genuinely difficult for them to accept a different one from a trained professional.
Confirmation bias
Closely related to the above is what researchers call the confirmation bias loop in health-seeking behaviour. A person feels a symptom, searches for it, lands on the most alarming result (because alarming content gets more engagement online), becomes convinced of the worst-case diagnosis, and then searches specifically for confirmation of that diagnosis.The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics paper on the “Google-informed patient” is careful to note that dismissing patient-initiated research outright also does harm, it erodes trust and can delay care when a patient genuinely has useful information.But there is a difference between a patient who comes in saying they think they know what they might have and a patient saying I know what I have.
Health anxiety, the research concludes, partially mediates the entire cycle. In other words, the act of searching is itself making people feel sicker, and the sicker they feel, the more they search.Is free diagnoses worth it?
Feeling fine is not the same as being fine.
Sixty percent of Indians aged 25 to 75 delay preventive health checkups until illness impacts their daily life, according to data from the Apollo Diagnostics India Health Report. In a country where healthcare is relatively accessible and people even come in from other nations for medical tourism, that is a concerning figure.A basic preventive checkup can cost as little as Rs 700. The average insurance claim for hospitalisation stands at Rs 70,558. Conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease,when detected late, require lifelong management rather than prevention. A study from Tamil Nadu found that only 29.82% of participants had ever undergone a preventive health checkup.
Research has found that diabetes and hypertension are now appearing in teenagers, with late adolescents at significantly higher risk due to academic pressure, sedentary behaviour, unhealthy diets, and prolonged social media use. And a lot of these patients go undiagnosed.The pattern is not limited to lifestyle diseases. Dr. Mitul Gupta, Senior Consultant in Gynaecology at Cocoon Hospital, Jaipur, points to a quieter crisis in women’s health. “Reproductive health problems begin quietly, or with symptoms that are often dismissed as normal,” she says. “Irregular periods, pelvic pain, unusual discharge — these are not things to wait out. Timely consultation can detect conditions like PCOS, fibroids, or hormonal imbalance early, before they become significantly harder to treat.“
Why do we avoid the doctor
It is worth pausing here to ask an uncomfortable question. Why do Indians resist the very care that could help them?Medical anxiety runs deep in our heads. Many patients avoid hospitals out of fear of bad news, invasive tests, or costs they cannot predict or control. A preventive checkup is, for many, not reassuring, it is an invitation for worry. There is also the financial calculus: healthcare in India though affordable in comparison is not affordable for a huge percentage of the population.There is also the matter of trust, or its absence. Patients who feel unheard by doctors turn to search engines that never make them feel stupid for asking. That is a systems problem as much as a behavioural one.But the cost of avoidance is not avoided, it is deferred and compounded.Advanced-stage treatments cost between 5 and 10 times more than early interventions. Cancer treatment at a late stage can reach Rs 15 to 20 lakhs, compared to Rs 2 to 3 lakhs when detected early.Medical expenses push an estimated 63 million Indians into poverty annually. The emergency ward, it turns out, is far more expensive than the diagnostic centre — in money, in time, and in the quiet devastation of a diagnosis that arrived a decade too late.
What a doctor wants
Dr. Rai’s ask is simple. “Stop ignoring early symptoms and seek advice from experts on time,” she says. “Many people wait until the problem becomes very serious, or try home remedies and random medicines first. Early consultation helps in timely diagnosis, prevents complications, and often makes treatment quicker and more affordable.” She pauses before adding what every doctor in India knows but rarely gets to say out loud: “Prevention and early action are always better than treatment.“You wouldn’t tell Virat Kohli how to hold a bat. Extend your doctor the same respect — and book the appointment before your body books it for you.
