Consumer Online Health Information - Research Paper Example

Introduction Science is a gift of god to all mankind, and since there is an advancement in technologies, beyond our imagination and more to come, we humans are moving on a roller caster and entering into a new undefined era of high technologies. Internet has made all kind of information just a click away. All the sectors whether agriculture or industrial or disaster management, internet technology has helped in developing new strategies and evaluating various aspects of risks, opportunities and issues. The advancement in technology leads in saving time and energy. Information technology has empowered people across various strata of the society by making the information available on different aspects of life from health related information to the information on stocks and process. In the recent past mergers of technology and information has helped people developing a cross functional platforms like string databases for the decision making and informative purposes. This paper covers different aspects of Customer care health information. Consumer Health Care Information (CHCI) The development of technology has given a new platform of sharing information and educating people regarding various health problems and treatments. According to Keley (1998) initially Self Help Groups in UK provided a platform for information sharing. These self help groups identify with specific issue and following the links of particular issue and provided information on different medical conditions. This was followed by Patient leaflets provided information and instructions regarding different aspects of medical status from information on contraceptive pills to the surgical processes. The information on drug and prescribed medicines and others is also available in different websites (Kiley, 1998). Consumer Health Care Information on NHS provides an interactive platform where a person can get all kind of information on various medical states, diseases, medicines and medical procedures. Consumer gets full information on different diseases and health. They get information on health processes, medicines, prevention and treatments. This reduces the basic expenditure and upgrades the level of knowledge of consumer. All kind of information is just a click away for the consumer. They are more aware and prepare to understand the problem described by the health care providers. These databases provide information in a manner that a layman can understand. Types and Trends of Consumer Health Care Information on Internet In the recent past, there have been various developments in the technology sector. Most people use internet for health purposes to find information or to research some health question on behalf of themselves or for their family members. About 25 million people in the United States have used the internet to get health or medical related information and there are more than 110 million users who surf internet daily (Rees, 2003). Similarly in UK the number of internet users has increased. Internet provided a good source of all kind of information to these people. Latest developments include the interactive information with use of different media in order to make the topic more understandable by the user. Tools for Quality Identification: Rees (2003) has listed different criteria to judge the consumer information. These are as follows: “Authority, credibility, comprehensiveness, understandability, ease of use, quality of illustrations and diagrams, and usefulness in both enhancing the patient-doctor relationship and personal health decision making” (Rees, 2003, p. 15) Authority: It provides a benchmark and a proper authority to the consumers to judge the given information as per their convenience. This increases the reliability on the information and user can comprehend the information better. An information from a reliable source helps in trust building. Credibility: The source of information should be credible which increases the reliability and trust on the information provided. Comprehensiveness: The information in the internet should include all items, details and facts of disease and the data should be up-to-date. Comprehensiveness of the information helps it to better understand the information. Understandability: The information in the internet for users should be understood by the users. This is possible when it is designed in a manner that users with different levels of knowledge can understand the information. Ease of use: The ease of use of information makes informs about the quality of information. The information which is easy to find, not complex and clear will have greater impact on user. The database should have different information, conditions and treatments distinctively presented. Quality of illustrations and diagrams: The information provided to consumers should give quality of illustrations as well as diagrammatical views which makes the consumer satisfy and finally use it for proper guidance. There are so many tools which advance technology that is available to people irrespective of their backgrounds. All the consumer health care information is available on the internet. Irrespective of time and geographic restrictions the consistent and accurate information can be provided to the users. Stvili, Mon and Yi (2009) have provided a model for online consumer health information on the basis of five quality criteria construct. Health information provides consumers and intermediaries are the primary sources of information in the communication process. The quality of the online consumer health information model also depend on the organisation and presentation of information as on the webpage the information needs to be presented in the way it attracts target audience. Stvili et al (2009) further stress on the need of defining and providing information on the basis of genre specific classification of information. The websites can be evaluated with respect to four main themes help to support a health information are- Authorship: It states that information given for consumers about their health should clearly identify authors, their affiliations and credentials and should be cross checked by reputed websites. Attribution: It states that the sources cited in sites should be stated along with relevant copyright details. It is important to clear that the information coming on any website should is evidence-based from several well run-trials or one doctor's real story. Disclosure: All conflicts of interest should be identified including sponsorship and advertising deals. All the information provided by consumer health care information portal is much intense and diversified that it takes to the total satisfactory and completeness of its consumer information needs and problems. Information provided by consumer health care information is very much relevant and satisfactory by all consumers thus leading to less waste of time, spent by consumers taking alternate rounds to doctors’ clinic. Levy & Royne (2009) states, “Health literacy is both a consumer and public health issue that exacts the enormous societal costs”. Low literacy rates always affect a range of population with health and financial implications. To improve the literacy of the population as a whole, schools and community based programs always helps to reduce it and it is important to offer these programs to geographical diverse areas so ,that it can be translated to large number of population suffering from severe low health literacy. A community based program should always stress upon the basic knowledge, problem solving matters and giving the best solutions and to educate the groups about the health related topics and by doing this sometimes a consumer can demand better for educational institutions and for health institutions.( (Levy & Royne,2009) . Impact of CHCI Relationship of Patient and Clinicians: The patient/clinician relationship issue is far reaching arising from health information on the internet and advances information technology. This is the possible impact on patient/clinician relationship. A Patient who has access to the option of results of 14,219 internet hits, may not approach or visit the doctor's clinic as they can easily get better information through internet. Despite progress in health care practice over the last 50 years, doctors is trained with-”the traditional patient relationship”, ensuring that this will help in making good relationship with their patients. The information gained by the patients from internet, takes lesser as compared when consulted by a physician. Through internet it is possible for a patient to gain some extra information and bring that lately to doctors for discussion but it will be very difficult for a doctor to explain that thing as this will take some extra time and sometime the doctor himself do not know the answer. Doctor and patient together can chose the most appropriate treatment using this technology. The precise impact should always encourage the NHS Information Technology strategy to look forward to view information technology as an integral part of patients/doctors consultation. With NHS a clinician could easily access the evidence-based material during their day to day work. This can be used for clinical consultation process. Patients and consumers need to be trained for using the information technology in the best way. Conclusion: Consumer health care information on internet is useful for the consumers. Internet on the one hand has become an integral part of the day to day life of people; it also helps in keeping people updated about various aspects of social and professional lives. In such scenario, consumer healthcare information provides a useful and effective source of information. This also allows consumers to find out about the problems that could be difficult for them to discuss with physician. 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