If you use the Internet to find health information, you've got plenty of company. A Harris Poll released last week shows that 117 million Americans have gone online to look up health topics, an increase from the 111 million who said they'd ever done so last year.

On average, people who do health searches online say they do so about seven times per month, up from five times a month in last year's survey. Nearly 90 percent said they were successful in finding what they were looking for.

The surging Internet traffic is part of a larger trend: More people are taking charge of their healthcare. It used to be that doctors were the primary decision-makers, the philosophy being "doctor knows best," says Matthew Hollon, an internist at the University of Washington. Now, he says, the model is shared decision-making, giving patients a bigger role in their healthcare, but also more responsibility for it.

At least one patient each day comes to Mary Jo Welker's family practice at Ohio State University with questions about something on the Internet. Recently, one woman asked if she should taper off her osteoporosis medicine after seeing an Internet article that suggested taking the drug for too long could reduce bone density. Welker said she and her patient decided to have a bone-density test done.

This woman, like 57 percent of the people surveyed in the Harris Poll, used online information in later discussions with a doctor, which Welker says is essential. Patients "need to bring that information back to their physician before they act," says Welker. A medication that sounds like the right fit may not work for an individual patient, she says.

Consumers should also pay attention to the quality of the websites. The National Cancer Institute has a Web page that offers tips on how to scrutinize a health website. For example, a health website should disclose where the information is coming from and whether it has any commercial ties to a particular product.