The use of the Web for health information

Aug/06/2008 06:27
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Harris Interactive, which has tracked online health information research for years, reported a slight dip in the number of Internet users who said they had made such searches this year. The polling company said that 150 million US adults (81% of Internet users) looked online for health info in 2008, down from 160 million who did so in 2007.
Ten years ago, in 1998, the Harris Poll began measuring the number of people going online for health care information. At that time we reported that 54 million people had done so at least once. Since then the number of those people, whom we labeled "cyberchondriacs," have increased almost every year, reaching 110 million in 2002, and 160 million in 2007.

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This year, the Harris Poll finds only 150 million who claim to have gone online to obtain health care information. Of course, 150 million is still a huge number and includes 66 percent of all adults and 81 percent of those who are online.


However, it does appear that there has been no increase in the total number of people online or in the number of cyberchondriacs.

Other interesting findings of the nationwide Harris Poll of 1,010 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive between July 8 and 13, 2008 include:

A quarter (25%) of those online go online for health care information often, virtually unchanged from last year (26%)

On average, cyberchondriacs look for healthcare information online 4.8 times a month

The overwhelming majority of cyberchondriacs continue to believe that the information they obtain is reliable (86%) and report that they were successful (89%) in their search

Just under half (47%) of cyberchondriacs have discussed the information they obtained online with their doctors, and virtually half (49%) of cyberchondriacs have gone online to look for information as a result of discussions with their doctors.




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