WildBlueSkies – Trends and strategies in Digital Media

Playing doctor on the Web often leads people to mistakenly believe that they are suffering from rare illnesses, according to a study by researchers at Microsoft [Via].
Web search engines have the potential to escalate medical concerns or “cyberchondria,” says the study, which describes cyberchondria as “unfounded increases in health anxiety based on the review of Web content.”
Due to the abundance of medical information now available online, for searchers without medical training even the slightest symptoms can get monstrous proportions. For example, Web surfers with a headache may end up concluding they have a brain tumor or those with chest pain that they are suffering a heart attack.
This should not come as a surprise – I remember reading Doctors by Eric Segal, where the students at the medical college invariably felt they the symptoms of the diseases that they were studying.
What deserves notice however, is the increasing number of people going online to look for medical related content online. Last year, a poll had concluded that cyberchondriacs now represent 84% of all online adults, up from last year’s 80%, and 72% in 2005.
The increasing focus on health related websites online, has also led to easy access to health related information. The websites will no doubt have to evaluate how they present information.

Related posts:

1. Medpedia – Wikipedia Model For The Medical World?
2. Medical Journals Go Free
3. What Drives Online Content?
4. Health – The New Frontier
5. When hypochondriacs go online

Filed under: Digital culture