User:Rghx/sandbox/Health Information On the Internet Sandbox FIrst Edit

A 1984 United States advertisement for access to health information with the 1980s Apple III

Health information on the Internet refers to all health related communications conducted through the Internet.

Introduction

The internet can be a useful resource for finding health information. Accessibility to online information is something that has grown as technological advances have come along. In the late 1990s, researchers noted an increase in people using the internet to access health-related content despite various implications that come with accessing this type of information online including variation in quality of health information, level of accessibility and overall health literacy. Moreover, accessibility on its own to online health information does not guarantee that the quality of such information will be easier to understand for the individual since health literacy is not always an ability that people have.

It is believed that patients who have knowledge of their personal medical history, will interpret and learn from this information in a way that benefits them. but this is not always the case since there has not been a international implementation of standards regarding the quality of health information that is accessible on the internet. Physicians worry that patients who conduct personal research of their medical history on the Internet are at risk for being 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.

Educational resources for lay audiences

Background on the doctor–patient relationship

Main article: Doctor–patient relationship

Physicians often have difficulty explaining complicated medical concepts to their patients, and similarly patients often have difficulty understanding complicated things their physicians tell them. One reason for this is that a patient's visit to a physician is likely to be less than 15 minutes, and physicians are unable to spend more time which patients typically desire. Physicians may use medical terms which patients do not understand, but would like to learn. A consensus exists 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, and socially advantaged patients enjoy many more benefits of shared decision making than patients who have disadvantages in getting healthcare, who maybe of a lower socioeconomic class or of minority status.

A patient's understanding lack of understanding their health contributes to a range of problems including the tendency to not adhere to the physician's medical advice, or miss medical appointments. Patients without access to health information are also more likely to use complementary and alternative medicine, which is not evidence-based medicine, and fail to inform their physician that they are doing so. While some benefits can be gained by training physicians to be more efficient in serving patients, there are also benefits in training patients to be more efficient in getting benefits from physicians. Some evidence points to the conclusion that efficient patient behavior is a powerful strategy for improving health care processes.

Resources

Various social forums exist in which anyone can have conversations about health with their peers. Such forums are especially popular among patients who seek to have conversations about shared medical concerns with others. Those who participate in online communities which discuss health issues report feeling relief about their health worries, perceiving more control over their health and medical condition, having more medical knowledge, and having more personal agency overall.

Some research has failed to find evidence to validate physicians' concerns that patients typically receive misinformation online or using health information to inappropriately conduct self diagnosis. Patients with chronic diseases who use the internet to get health information often acquire good skills to judge the quality of information which they find.

Academic medical literature

The written record of medical consensus is stored in scientific journals. Since the advent of electronic publishing there has been academic journal publishing reform which had a range of effects, including more researchers and physicians having greater access to professional information in medical journals through the Internet.

Patients' personal health information

Through various sources both publicly and privately available, datasets containing health information about large numbers of patients are available on the Internet to an extent which was impossible to manage before the Internet.

Some problems with accessibility to online health information can be attributed to the inefficiency of using search engines to seek health information.