Patients increasingly are turning to social networking sites to interact with fellow patients and medical experts, NPR's "Morning Edition" reports.
Sixty-one percent of adults have gone online to find health information, according to a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Of those patients, about 20% use the Internet and social networking Web sites to connect with other patients and health professionals.
Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project said patients "are posting their first-person accounts of treatments and side effects from medications." She added, "They are recording and posting those podcasts. They're tagging content. They are part of the conversation. And that, I think, is an indicator of where we could be going in terms of the future of participatory medicine."
The segment includes comments from:
- Fox; and
- Jamie Heywood, founder of a site called Patients Like Me (Shapiro, "Morning Edition," NPR, 11/16).