Submission + - Paging Doctor Google
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, at least three-quarters of all Internet users look for health information online; 1 in 9 of those with a high-speed connection do health research on a typical day; and and 75 percent of online patients with a chronic problem told researchers that "their last health search affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition." But just adding a word makes all the difference. Searching for the name of a certain cancer will bring up the Wikipedia entry and several information sites from major hospitals, drug companies and other providers but add the word "community" to that search and "it's like falling into an alternate universe," filled with sites that connect patients says Susannah Fox, the associate director at Pew. As a result "patients aren't learning from Web sites — they're learning from each other," says Dr. Ted Eytan. But can online information be trusted? In a study earlier this year, a report in the journal Cancer looked at 343 Web pages about breast cancer that came up in online searches and found an error rate of 5.2 percent."
