Évolution d’Internet dans le Domaine Médical

Abstract

The Internet is increasingly used for health purposes both as a source of information. As Health on the net (HON) Foundation mission is to guide the growing community of healthcare consumers and providers to reliable medical information we have been conducting the surveys on Internet use for health purposes for 15 years. The goal of the survey was to get the current state-of-art of Internet users attitudes towards health search and to compare the results with 2005. The survey was conducted in July and August 2010. It was open for anyone accessing HON web page (in both English and French,) through Facebook and Twitter links or HONcode certified web sites. There were 524 participants coming mainly from France (28%), the UK (18%) and the USA (18%). 65% of participants represented “general public”, remained 35% — health professionals. It emerged that the information quality remains to be the main barrier (80%) which users encounter while looking for health information online; 79% believe they critically assess health information online. Both patients and physicians consider Internet sources to be helpful in facilitating the communication between them, although professionals are less enthusiastic than the general public. These results justify the continuing efforts of HON to increase public awareness of quality issues and educate and guide users towards reliable health information.