Some 67% of US adults, or about 154 million people, report having looked up health and medical information online, according to a new Harris poll.
From 1998 to 2007, the percentage of Americans reporting that they had sought out health/medical information online rose steadily each year—growing from 27% in 1998 to 71% in 2007—then in 2008 dropped off slightly, to 66%:
The frequency with which Americans look up medical and health-related information on the web has leveled off since reaching a peak in 2007. In 2009, 57% of Americans surveyed said they accessed health information online "often" or "sometimes," a drop-off from 2007, when 66% of respondents said they did so:
Some 52% of those surveyed in 2009 said they had looked up health-related content on the web in the previous month, nearly double the percentage reporting the same in 2001 (27%):
Ease of Search and Reliability of Information
Harris polls across the years have found that the great majority of users find it easy to locate the medical information they want and consider what they find valuable and reliable:
Key findings:
- A significant majority (83%) of Americans who have sought out online health information reported that their search was successful and almost half (45%) said it was "very successful."
- An even larger majority (87%) said they found the information reliable (but only 28% said it was "very reliable").
Discussion of Online Health and Medical Information with Doctors
Key findings:
- Fully 44% of those who have ever sought healthcare information online reported discussing the information they obtained with their doctors. (This percentage marks a sizable decrease from the 58% who reported doing so in 2007.)
- Of US adults who have ever looked up health and medical information on the web, 7% said they "always" discussed what they found with their doctors and 22% said they "sometimes" did.
Half (49%) of US adults who have ever looked up medical/health information online said that they sought out information based on a discussion they had had with a physician:
About the data: Telephone surveys of 1,010 US adults nationwide were conducted by Harris Interactive between July 7 and 14, 2009.
