After medical school, I spent three years in a Pediatric residency where I focused on treating individuals. After that, I spent two years in a Preventive Medicine residency where I focused on treating populations and discovering interventions that improve the health of a population.
What Medical Information improve the health of a population? This is the question all scientific studies ask and hope to answer with a specific number.
I posted a possibly inflammatory question a few days ago: “Does access to online health information improve the health of a population?” I got plenty of personal anecdote comments about individuals whose lives were changed by online health information. That actually makes me extremely happy.
But I’m suggesting treating online health information as a therapeutic intervention. We should compare two groups: a population of people who do not have access to the internet and a population who does. Then we should assess the long term effects of health information. My guess is that the intervention will work for a sizable minority of savvy patients and fail for the sizable majority.
I can provide strong evidence suggesting that knowing what is good and bad for you doesn’t change behavior that leads to improved health. I can also provide strong evidence that the only beneficial aspect of regular prenatal care visits is having access to routine blood pressure checks and urinalyses. That doesn’t stop the insane amount of New Mommy sites from creating an entire industry around telling pregnant women that it’s much more complicated.
Does this mean that we should not publish health information on the internet available to all? Hell no. But it does mean that the vast majority of health-related websites are worthless excuses to host advertisements and do nothing for the majority of people who aren’t savvy enough to sift out the good and bad. It also means that the push toward creating websites that organize health information in new ways (such as Revolution Health) is barking up the wrong tree and are simply excuses to make money in the lucrative healthcare advertising Business Information. Look at Sermo. The drug companies are already salivating. It’s 43,000 physicians all in one place! Revolutionary! It’s revolutionary advertising…that’s about it.
The internet has enabled everyone to essentially have access to the information from the first two years of medical school. However, having information does very little when synthesizing that information and doing something about it…that’s why doctors train for years after learning all these facts.
Folks, it’s not about health information. It’s about personalized, accessible communication between patients and doctors mixed with the other magic question…how do we change a culture’s behavior?
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