Online Health Information Seeking

Online Health Seeking: How Social Networks Can Be Healing Communities

http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/10/25/online-health-seeking-how-social-networks-can-be-healing-communities/

1.      Internet

Adult: 61% get health info online (80% are internet users)

E-Patients: 60% consume social consume social media; 29% have contributed content; 19% consult rankings of providers (5% post them); 18% consult reviews of hospitals (4% post them)

2.      Mobile

17% use mobile phone for health info (7% have health apps)

Over-represented among young, minorities, urban residents, upper SES (Socioeconomic Status)

No female/ male differences

3.      Social Network

Read other’s commentaries 34%

Find others who have same condition 18%

Get info from SNS 11% of SNS users

Get info from Twitter 8% of Twitter users

4.      Other Data

60% of e-patients say the info found online affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition.

53% say it lead them to ask a doctor new questions, or to get a second opinion from another doctor.

38% say it affected a decision about whether to see a doctor.

In this report, the author mentioned about having librarian serving as nodes between patients and health care. This nodes idea could also be helpful for the self-service tool, providing trusted information for patients.

Peer-to-Peer Health

http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/02/28/peer-to-peer-health-care-2/

Internet serves as pathway to find and help each other.

Social tools deepen people’s connections groups they joined offline.

18% People went online to find others who might have health concerns similar to others.

People going through a medical crisis are voracious information consumers: 85% say they look online for health information, compared with 77% of internet users who have not had that experience in the past year

When finding recommendation for a doctor or a specialty, 52% of adult say they think health professionals are more helpful than peer sources when it comes to getting a recommendation for a doctor or specialist, 27% of adults prefer to ask friends family and fellow patients for this type of advice. Order adults are much more likely than younger ones to say health professionals’ opinions are more helpful. Generation X internet users (34-45) are the most likely age group to look online for information about health professionals.

When finding recommendation for a hospital or medical facilitates, 62% of adult say they think health professionals are more helpful than peer sources when it comes to getting a recommendation for a doctor or specialist, 27% of adults prefer to ask friends family and fellow patients for this type of advice. Older adults are considerably more likely than younger adults to turn to health professionals for this type of information

Characteristics of online and offline health information seekers and factors that discriminate between them 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953604000796

1.      Main Differences

Relate to traditional inequality levels in education, age, and income. Individuals who are older, have lower incomes, and are less educated are less likely to be in the group that uses online health information.

Age was a key factor that discriminated between online and offline health information seeking. As these results indicated, the mean age for the non-Internet health information-seeking group was 11-years older than that for the Internet health information seeking group.

2.      Information Sources

Seeking health information from doctors and nurses is highest among both groups. About 80% of each group report using this source.

Among the offline group, health magazines, friends or relatives, and television or radio are the next most often cited sources of health information. For the online group, friends and relatives are most often cited, following health care professionals. 55% of the online group report seeking health information once or twice via the Internet during the past year. 45% of this group report using these medium three or more times during the past year.

Health care professionals were cited more often than other sources for health information by both the online and offline groups. However, significant segments of both groups relied upon additional sources for health information

3.      Other results

The results of this study suggest that online health information seekers are healthier (self-reported data) than the offline group.

A study of web usability for older adults seeking online health resources

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1035578

Improvements to Web design are needed in order to accommodate vision, cognition, and motor skills of older adult users. Small font size, requiring mouse (might be problem for users with unsteady hands), and not providing help or site map support were main results found.

In order to promote the design of senior-friendly sites, future research needs to enhance the existing NIA/NLM guideline (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/checklist.pdf).

Since older people is an important group of users seeking health care information, it might be interesting to consider the idea about make to tool responsive to older adult users.

 

 

Health information-seeking behavior in adolescence: the place of the internet

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15652680

“Perceived credibility of the internet varied because expertise and trustworthiness were sometimes difficult to determine, and empathy could be facilitated through online communities but the individual could control disclosure. The internet combines positive features of traditional lay and professional, personal and impersonal sources. Although it is unlikely to supplant the role of trusted peers and adults, the internet has found an important place among adolescents' repertory of health information sources.”