The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Health Information On the Internet Monika Merkes monika@melbpc.org.au

Would you like to chat with a doctor about the latest theories on migraines or discuss different treatments for depression? Thanks to the Internet you can now do it from the comfort and (relative) privacy of your own home. 

A group of Melbourne doctors run eMedical (http://www.emedical.com.au), a Website with health news, a health calendar, links to health information, and a chat room. At the time of writing, the chat room offered free GP-moderated discussions on migraines, general paediatrics, anxiety, depression and panic attacks, breast cancer and a general chat.

Some 43% of Australian adults use the Internet. This places Australia among the top five countries for Internet use. Only Norway, the United States, Iceland and Sweden have a higher proportion of people surfing the net. Net use is highest among the young, the well-educated and people on higher incomes. Slightly less women than men use the Internet 
(http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/information_economy/ecommerce_analysis/ie_stats/StateOfPlay/index.htm).

We do not know how many Australians use the Internet to seek health information, but there are estimates from the US that e-health consumers are growing in number at twice the rate of general Internet users. One survey found that 54% of Americans with Internet access - or 50 million people - have looked for health/medical information on the Internet, and on a typical day 9% of online women and 4% of online men seek out this type of information (http://www.pewInternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=11). We can assume that many Australians do likewise.

People's expectations about their health care are changing. Rather than simply trusting their doctor or other health professional, many individuals now demand a more active involvement in the decision making about their health care than they had in the past, and this desire for involvement increases their need for information. The Internet is a ready source of information with the number of Websites offering health information and advice steadily increasing.

When I searched for "health information", the result was overwhelming: Yahoo found 994,000 and Google 1,970,000 matches. Needless to say I did not check all of these, but a quick glance revealed health related Websites providing information on medical conditions, health and wellness products, prescription and other drugs, diet and weight loss, complementary medicine, health promotion and illness prevention, medical journals, information for specific groups of people (eg. women, adolescents), as well as obscure material and fraudulent claims, such as bogus AIDS cures, spurious cancer clinics or instant weight loss products. Apart from Websites, there are also chat rooms, e-mail lists and news groups that deal with health information.

Clearly there is a great demand for such services, but the fact remains that self-diagnosis with the help of information from the Internet can be distressing and potentially dangerous. Health advice may be conflicting and confusing, and there is the risk that the information may be misinterpreted and lead to a wrong diagnosis. One "Internet scare story" recently doing the rounds concerns an older Australian couple who allegedly committed suicide after erroneously concluding that one of them had terminal cancer on the basis of information accessed via the Internet. Whilst it seems that this particular story can be consigned to the dustbin of urban myth - determined efforts have so far failed to confirm that the couple in question had access to the Internet - it is not a totally improbable scenario.

Of course a little common sense would go a long way towards minimizing the risks posed by self-diagnosis. It is advisable to double-check all information with a real life health professional - a point stressed on virtually all reputable Internet health sites.

The plethora of material on the Internet makes it difficult to find health information that is relevant, reliable and easy to understand. As with other searches, the keywords should be as specific as possible. Next, the following questions may help to assess the relevance and reliability of the information:

• What is the purpose of this Website and who is its audience?
• Who has sponsored or paid for this Website? Do I trust this source?
• Is the author or producer of the information and his/her credentials listed? Can the author/producer be contacted directly?
• Are appropriate references provided?
• How current is the information?

Reprinted from the October 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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