Symptom Checkers available in the UK

Safety first: if you feel you have an urgent problem then go straight to 111 Online, find out more about 111 Online here. The 111 Online website will take you through a quick series of questions and decide the best advice for you, which may be:

sending you an ambulance
arranging for a doctor or nurse to call you back to understand more about what's wrong with you
arranging an appointment with your GP
asking your GP to call you when they are next open
suggesting you call your GP
suggesting the nearest place you can travel to, to get help
booking you into a pharmacy to get advice

As you can see there are a lot of options available from 111 Online, some are automatic and don't involve waiting for a phone call back, and are joined-up with NHS services local to you.

If your issue has been troubling you a while, and you feel it's important, but not urgent, on the next section we describe good quality and free online symptom checkers.

Symptom Checkers

Symptom Checkers Explained

If you are having troubling symptoms for a while, it can be a miserable and worrying experience. Using Google can create massive lists of complicated things to worry about, which are difficult to pick through and sort out, creating more anxiety.

Using one of the free, simple, quality assured symptom checkers below can give you a short, organised list of potential problems to think about, and possibly discuss with your doctor, when you are ready.

We believe patients are the experts in their own health, and a better informed patient will be able to look after themselves better. So don't be afraid to use these tools to learn about what might be bothering you, it might save you a few visits to your GP, saving both you and them time.

Each of these systems says they are not a substitute for medical advice, not intended to be medical advice and to seek medical advice from your doctor.

Below, we explain the following symptom checkers:

- Isabel Health

- NHS.UK

Isabel Health

The Isabel symptom checker is free. We recommend it because it has been developed over nearly 20 years, it is very quick and easy to use:

you enter your symptoms in plain English, it doesn't ask lots of questions
you can enter as many symptoms as you want
it gives you a list of what might be wrong with you that you can email back to yourself to share with your GP, highlighting any 'red flag' problems, and separating common from rarer problems
it has been used in some parts of the NHS
To visit the Isabel website, click here
To download the Isabel user-guide, click here
To learn more about Isabel, click here
Lastly, Isabel says - How should Isabel be used? - Isabel, like any symptom checker, can only suggest some possible conditions based on the symptoms you have entered or help you decide where to get care.

NHS.UK

If you have never visited the Health A-Z on the NHS.UK website it is worth checking the wide range of health advice available on the site including:

symptoms
illnesses
online tools and checkers
where and how to get help locally

The video below shows what's available.