Doctors offer insights and caveats for Internet searches

It may be hard for patients to evaluate online health information, but surfing the Web can prove useful for physicians.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Dec. 11, 2006.

Two recent studies have concluded what physicians such as Susan Andrews, MD, already know.

First, that patients need help navigating health information on the Internet. Second, that physicians shouldn't be afraid to try a Google search if they need help with a diagnosis.

Dr. Andrews, a Murfreesboro, Tenn., family physician, refers patients to specific health sites if they want more information. But she said she also uses Google several times weekly to search for information that can help her diagnose or develop treatment plans for her patients.

"I mean, [patients] can't have the filter that I have because I have had 30 years of training" and experience, Dr. Andrews said. "I can look at a long list of Google results and [quickly] know which ones are from quacks."

Still, for either physician or patient, Dr. Andrews and others say the watchword is proceed with caution.

On Oct. 28, the Washington D.C.-based Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study that found 80% percent of adult Internet users research health information online. But 75% of them fail to check the source and date of that information. Pew says 113 million adult Americans have searched for health information. Manhattan Research in New York last month pinpointed that number at an estimated 116 million this year, up from 75 million in 2001.

J. Carson Rounds, MD, a family physician in Lake Forest, N.C., and president of the North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians, reported the quality of the information his patients find on the Web is usually bad, and that patients are often unable to tell him the source of their information. Dr. Rounds recommends a few sites to patients, but he said he might need to do more research on his own. That's because the Pew Internet survey "tells you that a lot of people go looking [for health information online] whether they bring it to our attention or not," Dr. Rounds said.