Health information on the Internet

Health information on the Internet refers to all communication related to health done on the Internet.

As a general communication channel, various Internet products serve every type of general health information.

In the late 1990s researchers began to note that huge numbers of people were using the Internet to seek health information, despite various problems with the quality of information or inefficiencies in accessing it. Various problems have been identified for those using search engines to seek health information.

There is a premise that patients with access to their personal health information presented in a form they can understand will be able to interpret and learn from this information in a way that benefits them. Physicians worry that patients using their own medical history records as a starting point for personal research on the Internet are at risk for being overwhelmed and misinformed when seeking health information on the Internet.

As of 2013 opinions about the relationship health care providers should have with online health information were still being established. According to one 2014 study, "The flow of information has fundamentally changed, and physicians have less control over health information relayed to patients. Not surprisingly, this paradigm shift has elicited varied and sometimes conflicting views about the value of the Internet as a tool to improve health care."

Social media channels have been noted as places which physicians can visit to get insight on patient thoughts. Patients have increasingly turned to social media for health information, sometimes of dubious quality. Several studies have used social media to gather data on patients' adverse drug reactions (ADRs), with generally promising results.

Various commercial organizations use health information gathered from the Internet. The use of health information gathered from social media has been described as raising serious ethical and privacy concerns, including the risk of accidental violations of patient privacy by health care providers on social media.

Physicians have difficulty explaining complicated medical concepts to their patients and patients have difficulty understanding complicated things which physicians tell them. One reasons for this is that a patient's visit to a physician is likely to be less than 15 minutes, and in any case, physicians are unable to spend the amount of time which patients that patients typically desire. Physicians use medical terms which patients do not understand, but which they would like to learn. There is consensus that patients should have shared decision making, which means that they make informed decisions about the direction of their health care in collaboration with their physician. Rich, educated, socially advantaged patients enjoy many more benefits of shared decision making than patients who have disadvantages in getting healthcare, including lower socioeconomic class or having a minority status.

...
Wikipedia