Also, please read the analysis "New diagnostic tests: more harm than good", BMJ 2017;358:j3314 (Published 18 July 2017). Direct link:
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j3314
"Although new diagnostics may advance the time of diagnoses in selected patients, they will increase the frequency of false alarms, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in others. Bjorn Hofmann and H. Gilbert Welch explain how to minimise harm."
Key messages
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Innovative technologies and ample venture capital are combining to produce new disease biomarkers and mobile monitoring devices
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These new diagnostics are technologically advanced but do not automatically provide improvements in clinical care and population health
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They have the potential to help some but also to increase the frequency of false alarms, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in others
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Excessive testing and false alarms may increase healthcare workload and shift clinicians’ focus towards the healthy
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Misleading feedback at both the population and individual levels tends to favour further market growth
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Clinicians must provide a strong counterbalance: educating patients, respecting baseline risk, thinking downstream, and expecting misleading feedback
Published on 25 July 2017.
