Health information & the Internet

Health information is an important

The rapid growth in digital communication generally, has lead to equally rapid growth in the demand for innovative ways of approaching the problem of delivering information to patients. While it is often difficult to accurately interpret internet-use statistics, we can point to some indicative trends. Whether or not it is actually the case, as Nicholas et al. (2002) report, quoting work by Bowesley (1999), that health-related information is “second only to pornography in popularity”, evidence suggests that health is an important topic. ‘Bird-avian flu’, for example, made it into the Google Zeitgeist review of 2005 (see figure one), with recent research by the Oxford Internet Survey (OXIS, 2005), which surveyed UK internet use, reporting that 37% of British internet users had used the internet to conduct health-related searches.

Figure one: Frequency of Google Searches for Bird-Avian or Flu (Google Zeitgeist, 2005)".

Source - Kierans C, Mair M, “Assessing the effectiveness of new health information and communication technology in providing support to patients with breast cancer receiving treatment with Liverpool NHS" 2006. | Download