Recent studies have found that consumers increasingly are turning to the Internet for health information.
In addition to health care Web sites, such as WebMD, consumers are turning to user-generated health content, such as physician and hospital rankings, blogs and chat groups.
While the Internet's influence on consumers' health care decisions is outpacing traditional channels, such as television, radio and print media, physicians still are the biggest influence on consumer health behavior, according to Monique Levy, senior director of research at Manhattan Research.
In an iHealthBeat Special Report by Mina Kim, experts discuss the growing use of the Internet for health information.
The segment includes comments from:
- Mitchell Cohen, a private practice family physician in Elma, Washington;
- Robin Cohen, a statistician with CDC's National Center for Health Statistics; and
- Levy.
Google and Microsoft's Bing recently refined their search engines to provide consumers with more credible and relevant information (Kim, iHealthBeat, 4/15).
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