Google wants patients to be able to hangout with their doctors online

Spend long enough looking up illnesses online and you’ll eventually come to the conclusion that, no matter how insignificant the symptoms, you’ll end up convinced you have cancer. If Google has its way though, that could soon be a thing of the past.

The internet giant is apparently working on connecting anyone searching for medical symptoms with doctors via video chat.

The feature was first spotted by a Reddit user, with Google later confirming to Engagdget that it was working on the new feature.

“When you’re searching for basic health information — from conditions like insomnia or food poisoning — our goal is provide you with the most helpful information available. We’re trying this new feature to see if it’s useful to people,” the company said in a statement to Gizmodo.

According to the statement, the service is tied to Helpouts, its newish service that allows you to receive help from experts in a variety of fields using the company’s Hangouts feature.

That means you’ll most likely have to pay for the advice you get from the doctors on the service, but if it in any way helps alleviate the internet cancer scare phenomenon it’ll totally be worth it.

Image: Alex Proimos via Flickr.