Web tangles healthcare

Eighty per cent of adults have looked up medical conditions online, a US poll showed. Photo / NZ Herald

The computer and the internet are great healthcare tools, but they can also do a lot of medical harm.

Researchers are only beginning to appreciate how information on the web can be used to help inform a patient in ways that augment, rather than replace, actual consultations with doctors, nurses and pharmacists.

There is a fine line. The tradition of doctors jotting notes on a chart has largely evolved to typing the same notes on a computer screen. The notes are more legible and can roll over into an electronic medical record that can be better shared with other caregivers.

But plenty of doctors roll their eyes when a patient comes in with a fist full of printouts from the web about their condition, or worse, what their condition might be.

About seven out of 10 people have regular access to the internet and, according to a 2006 US poll, 80 per cent of adults have looked up medical conditions online. About 60 per cent searched on health issues five or more times a month.

Experts say when medical searches start consuming hours of each day, the patient might be addicted to internet symptom diagnosis - a cyberchondriac.

Psychiatrists say up to 90 per cent of patients diagnosed with hypochondria - debilitating distress over imagined illness - also obsessively search the web for information on symptoms and illness.

A couple of Microsoft researchers, Eric Horvitz and Ryen White, last year reported an analysis of online health searches that found about 25 per cent of surfers sought health information, but also looked at how they used what they searched.

They found a marked tendency to only look at the first few results and to focus on the worst case scenario - as in brain tumour versus brain freeze for a headache - in whatever entries they perused.

The Microsoft team hopes to use the findings to refine how search engines cough up health advice, and to give users some sense of the likelihood that what they're experiencing is really a serious medical problem.

A report published last year by British analysts on future use of internet search technology in public health monitoring noted: "If the number of patients turning to online services for a diagnosis increases, we see a growing demand for intelligent technology that can identify psychosomatic diseases" - that is, a cyberchondria filter.

Even commercial web engines specifically geared towards narrowing symptoms down to a limited number of possibilities often leave readers with a long list that is unranked by how common the ailments are, critics say.

What is not yet clear is how the web can positively impact health outcomes.

The Harris survey, for instance, found that only 45 per cent of health surfers looked up information about a medical problem after it had been diagnosed by a doctor - which is the point when many physicians might want the patient to get better informed by reading pamphlets or going to well-vetted websites.

Still, it appears web searches do influence treatment for at least some patients.

A new analysis to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Cancer shows that colorectal cancer patients who seek out information from the internet and media are more likely to be aware of and receive the latest treatments. Other studies have shown that about four out of 10 cancer patients search for information about cancer online.

Dr Stacy Gray of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and researchers at the National Cancer Institute centre on cancer communications at the University of Pennsylvania looked at what treatments 633 patients received compared with how active they were in seeking out information.

They found that aggressive information seekers were nearly three times more likely to have heard about two new front-line drugs for cancer treatment (Avastin and Erbitux) than patients who did not seek information and more than three times more likely to receive the therapies.

HEALTH SURFING
* When medical searches start consuming hours of each day, a person might be addicted to internet symptom diagnosis - a cyberchondriac.
* There is a tendency to only look at the first few results and focus on the worst-case scenario - as in brain tumour versus brain freeze for a headache.
* Up to 90 per cent of patients diagnosed with hypochondria also obsessively search the web for information on symptoms and illness.

- NZPA