Using Health-Related Websites

The popular acceptance of the Internet is provided tremendous opportunities for consumers.  These opportunities are readily identifiable because they exists at every point of the process: preventive healthcare information, regularly scheduled wellness screenings, searching for physicians based upon different criteria (e.g. credentials, specialty, experience, location, affiliation, etc), setting up appointments, filling out patient histories, learning about ailments, diseases and conditions, post-treatment follow-up, completing survey questionnaires about healthcare quality, inquiring about payment matters, obtaining insurance re-imbursements, filling out prescriptions, purchasing prescription and non-prescription drugs, sharing experiences with other patients, and so on.

We will now cite some survey data from the MARS OTC/DTC Pharmaceutical Study.  This is a mail survey of 23,705 adults in the USA conducted during January-March 2001.  In this survey, 60% of the survey respondents said that they had accessed the internet at home, at work or some place else in the last 3 months.  The next table shows the internet access incidence by different demographic characteristics.  The results here are consistent with commonly known facts about internet users --- younger, better educated and affluent.  There are no surprises here.

Demographic 
Characteristics
% Accessed Internet in Last 3 Months
(Base: Total US Adults)
Sex
     Male
     Female

62%
59%
Age
     18-24
     25-34
     35-49 
     50-54
     55-64
     65+

75%
78%
68%
59%
45%
24%
Hispanic 58%
Race
     White
     American Indian/Alaskan Native
     Black
     Asian Pacific Islander
     Other race

62%
65%
44%
80%
61%
Marital Status
     Single
     Married
     Divorced
     Widowed
     Separated

68%
64%
50%
21%
50%
Employment Status
     Full-time (30 hours per week or more)
     Part-time (less than 30 hours)
     Full-time student
     Not employed
     Retired

71%
63%
96%
53%
27%
Education
     Less than high school
     Completed high school
     Some college
     College graduate
     Post-graduate study/degree

 30%
50%
72%
85%
84%
Employed Personal Income
     Less than $20,000
     $20,000 - $29,999
     $30,000 - $39,999
     $40,000 - $49,999
     $50,000 - $59,999
     $60,000 - $74,999
     $75,000 - $99,999
     $100,000 - $149,999
     $150,000 - $249,999
     $250,000 or more

54%
66%
67%
80%
80%
92%
90%
90%
93%
95%
TOTAL 60%

The purpose of this article is to examine the incidence of visiting health-related websites.  Within the MARS study, those people who said that they accessed to the internet in the last 3 months were shown a list of health-related websites with their color logos and asked if they had visited them in the last 30 days.  We reproduce this list of websites below as a matter of historical interest, because quite a few of them are out of business by the time that this article was composed (October 2001).

According to the MARS study, 35% of the internet users have visited one or more of these health-related websites in the last 30 days.   In the next table, we show the incidence by different demographic characteristics.  We do not observe any strong patterns, so the need for health-related information appears to cut equally across demographic groups.  A different perspective on the same fact may be that ill health (or the fear of it) is a great equalizer that pursues us from birth till death, even though the specifics change (see previous article).

Demographic 
Characteristics
% Visited Health-Related Websites
(Base: Accessed Internet Last 3 Months)
Sex
     Male
     Female

33%
38%
Age
     18-24
     25-34
     35-49 
     50-54
     55-64
     65+

36%
40%
35%
32%
28%
34%
Hispanic 38%
Race
     White
     American Indian/Alaskan Native
     Black
     Asian Pacific Islander
     Other race

34%
37%
41%
37%
44%
Marital Status
     Single
     Married
     Divorced
     Widowed
     Separated

37%
35%
35%
28%
34%
Employment Status
     Full-time (30 hours per week or more)
     Part-time (less than 30 hours)
     Full-time student
     Not employed
     Retired

35%
38%
35%
38%
33%
Education
     Less than high school
     Completed high school
     Some college
     College graduate
     Post-graduate study/degree

39%
34%
35%
35%
38%
Employed Personal Income
     Less than $20,000
     $20,000 - $29,999
     $30,000 - $39,999
     $40,000 - $49,999
     $50,000 - $59,999
     $60,000 - $74,999
     $75,000 - $99,999
     $100,000 - $149,999
     $150,000 - $249,999
     $250,000 or more

35%
37%
40%
29%
40%
36%
31%
27%
36%
34%
TOTAL 35%

The health-related websites can be very different from each other.  Some are online pharmacies, some are women's health specialists, some are specialized sections within portals/news sites, some contain chat rooms and forums, and so on.  These distinctions occur because health is not a monolithic subject (as, say, major league baseball might be).

In the MARS survey, those survey respondents who have accessed health-related websites in the last 30 days were asked to identify their reasons.  The chart below shows that the response rates to the pre-listed answers (note: multiple responses are allowed).  By far, the single most common reason is that they need to obtain information about a specific ailment, disease or condition.

The information above forms a suitable basis for a segmentation of the health-related field on the internet.  However, as history has revealed so far, going after the largest segment is not necessarily the winning business plan.  For example, an online pharmacy does not need millions and millions of visitors, because all they need is a core collection of frequent buyers.

Idealists proclaim that the Internet has empowered healthcare consumers through the democratization of medical and health-related information.  In an article by Joanne Kaufman in New York Magazine, NYU Medical Center neurosurgeon Patrick Kelly said, "We talk doctor talk and we've had power because we controlled information.  But the Internet removes the monopoly on information. It's going to change medicine in much the same way the printing press changed the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Because of the Internet, medicine is going to become consumer-based like anything else, like buying a television set. Doctors aren't going to be happy and hospitals aren't going to be happy, but they're going to have to learn to march to this different drummer."

But things are never that easy.  While Internet-enabled consumers can go to the Google.com and look up symptoms and treatments for any number of ailments, diseases and conditions, they do not always have the background and training to interpret the facts properly and/or grasp the totality of their situations.  The Kaufman article reported these tragicomic anecdotes:

(posted by Roland Soong, 10/17/2001)


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