Hunting For Health
Patients are searching for more medical info online
Finding a new doctor in a new town is a daunting task. The Pew Internet and American Life Project wanted to find out if the online world made it any easier. So they did a survey. "One person said she had polio as a child, was moving to San Antonio, and needed a specialist in post-polio syndrome," says Susannah Fox, the project's associate director. "By going online, she was able to find two even before she moved."
Doc shopping is just one of several online health activities that are on the increase, according to the Pew survey, released last week: 28 percent of American Internet users do it, compared with 21 percent just two years ago. Searches for diet or nutritional supplement information are also on the rise, as are forays onto the Web for info about health insurance, drugs, and experimental treatments. Overall, 80 percent of people who use the Internet say they use it to find information on health topics. That's a lot higher than what appeared in some other surveys of Internet health use, which had put the number at about 50 percent. "That's the same answer we got when we only asked a general question about health," Fox says. "So we decided to get more specific and ask about 16 different health topics. When you ask specific questions, it jogs people's memories: 'Oh yeah, I did search for health insurance.' And when we rolled all this together, we got the higher number."
Finding the right stuff. But just because people are using the Internet more often doesn't mean they are using it intelligently. The Medical Library Association recommends that people look at the source and the date of health info on the Web to ensure it's reliable and up to date. Pew found, however, that a mere 25 percent of health seekers did that. "That's the scary part," says Fox.
Not necessarily, says Tom Ferguson, a physician and director of an Internet health project for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (He also consults for Pew.) "These people form their own online information networks, using E-mail or blogs, which expand to include health professionals. Over time, as they trade information, the bad stuff gets filtered out," he says. Even better, "they are raising the bar of healthcare." A cancer patient at Johns Hopkins who learns about a state-of-the-art treatment, for example, will mention it online. "Another patient, at another hospital that is not top tier, reads this and says to his oncologist, 'Why can't I get this?' " Ferguson says. Doctors can expect more of those questions--and will need to be ready with the answers.
Advice Wanted
Percentage of Internet users who have searched for information about:
Quitting smoking 7 pct.
Experimental treatments 23 pct.
Doctors or hospitals 28 pct.
Health insurance 31 pct.
Drugs 40 pct.
Exercise 42 pct.
Diet, nutrition, vitamins 51 pct.
Specific medical problem 66 pct.
Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project
Rob Cady-- USN&WR
This story appears in the May 30, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
