Any physician will tell you that patient access to the endless supply of medical information online is a double-edged sword. On the one hand knowledge is power, but on the other hand self-diagnosis often leads to misdiagnosis.

Google has always stated that its search results are not intended as medical advice, but in the overall interest of providing users with the most meaningful information faster, the company has unveiled a new tool that breaks down key medical informatics.

If you do a search on a common medical condition, three tabs appear to the right of the results: about, symptoms, and treatment.

The about tab gives an overview of the condition, including the condition's typical duration, treatments, contagiousness, most frequent type of patient, and frequency in the U.S.

Symptoms and treatment tabs provide details on those subjects.

All of the data is drawn from a variety of trusted medical sources, ranging from Mayo Clinic and WebMD, to the FDA, NIH, and CDC.

Although the feature has only been rolled out in the U.S. so far, Google hopes to expand into other parts of the world over time.

"One in 20 Google searches are for health-related information. And you should find the health information you need more quickly and easily," said Prem Ramaswami, product manager for Google, in a statement.

Google intends to expand the number of conditions featured in the medical search knowledge graph over time, starting with the ones most frequently searched and working their way down.

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