About three-quarters of Americans who go online for medical advice fail to consistently check the source and date of the information, a survey suggests.
Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet Project in Washington, D.C., found about 10 million American adults, or seven per cent of internet users in the U.S., searched for health or medical information on the web in one day during August.
Health websites often do not include the source and date of the information posted.
(CBC)
Health searches were about as popular as paying bills online, reading blogs or using the web to look up a phone number of address.
But 75 per cent of health seekers said they check the source and date of health information they find online "only sometimes," "hardly ever," or "never," meaning they aren't checking for signs of quality in their search results.
Those who "always" check were 15 per cent of respondents, and another 10 per cent said they do so "most of the time."
Nearly half, or 48 per cent of health information seekers, said they were looking for information for someone else, not themselves.
"Search engines are the first stop for two-thirds of internet users with a health question and it turns out the search is often on behalf of someone else," said Fox.
"These days, internet users bring the gift of information to a bedside, along with flowers and best wishes."
Popular health topics to search for online included:
- Specific disease or medical treatments.
- Exercise or fitness.
- Diet, nutrition, vitamins or nutritional supplements.
- Prescription drugs.
- Alternative medicines.
Launch of medical search engines
People may not check for the source and date of information since about four per cent of "frequently visited" health websites disclosed the source on their page, and two per cent said how the content is updated, according to a recent study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
New search engines that focus only on medical topics could change how people search for health information, the report said.
"Some examples of these 'vertical' search engines include: Healthline.com, Healia.com, Kosmix.com, Mammahealth.com, and Medstory.com but the industry also awaits word on Google’s plans for expanding this category of search."
The study was based on telephone interviews with 2,928 adults in August. The results are considered accurate to within three percentage points at a confidence interval of 95 per cent.
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