Unless you’ve been hiding under a virtual rock, you may have noticed that online health has once again become big (just as it was for a few years in the 1999 – 2000 timeframe). Once again we have huge corporate conglomerates from Microsoft to the former head of AOL trying to tell people that what they want and need is an online personal health record (PHR).

And once again, patients seem largely disinterested in such a “tool,” because nobody wants to be responsible for inputting and keeping track of all of that data, lab results, etc. (except a small percentage of highly active patients, especially those grappling with life-threatening or chronic conditions).

A few days ago, iHealthBeat published an article detailing what patients actually do online (versus what some companies would like them to do), entitled, Research Data Show Variations in E-Health Behaviors. They survey was conducted on 200,000 U.S. households, so the dataset is a nice, diverse large one.

The top four online health activities conducted by U.S. residents all involve the activity of researching: prescriptions (38% of people), treatment options (37%), medical procedures (37%) and disease/wellness information (31%).

Compare that with interest in an online medical record:

Consumers are less likely to embrace IT-based activities; completing online medical records attracts only 6% of consumers, and only 9% e-mail with physicians. … Only 9% of consumers check lab or test results online.

The survey also found that refilling prescriptions (done by 24% of adults), completing a health risk assessment (16%), asking clinicians for medical advice (14%) and using online support groups (10%).

That last number is most interesting to me, if this data is generalizable. It’s estimated that 160 million people in the U.S. have gone online for health information, suggesting approximately 16 million people in the U.S. are using or are interested in using a support group. These are large numbers and encouraging to hear, since support groups are often overlooked and underappreciated by many medical and mental health professionals.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 24 Nov 2007
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