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The New Scientist reports that “Sixty-one per cent of American adults seek out health advice online.” Looking for medical advice online is okay as long as you don’t rely on a unreliable sites. For instance, who would trust a user generated site like Wikipedia? The answer to this question, is doctors.
According to a report in April by US healthcare consultancy Manhattan Research, fifty percent of U.S. doctors turn to Wikipedia for medical information.
Tags: Health IT
From the BBC:
“…researchers found Web searches for common symptoms such as headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.
Searching for ‘chest pain’ or ‘muscle twitches’ returned terrifying results with the same frequency as less serious ailments, even though the chances of having a heart attack or a fatal neurodegenerative condition is far lower than having simple indigestion or muscle strain, for example.“
Information technology has the possibility of greatly increasing the efficiency of health care. EMRs can reduce the cost of accessing patient information. New technologies can make medical devices more effective.
But is there a cost to increased medical technology? GigaOM wonders
“...will widespread diagnostics increase the burden on healthcare? Somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of autopsies reveal diseases other than the one that killed the patient. If consumers test themselves, then tell their doctors, the medical system could wind up treating 50 percent more diseases than it does today — even those that wouldn’t have killed the patient.”
Will treating diseases before they appear increase health care quality or just drive up costs? On the future will reveal the answer.
Tags: EMR, Health IT, Technology
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