Internet Medicine.

Working in a government setup I rarely get patients who are well-off or well-educated. But occasionally I find patients who are more interested in their diseases. They want to know the cause and the kind of treatment they are receiving. I’m obviously delighted to make them understand about their ill health. Some patients (usually young techies) have come back and told me about their search for the disease conditions on the net. I encourage them to discuss about the information they found on the internet. Some of them are convinced they have a big disorder, some others could not find the disease if it existed, but most of them are confused. I’m not surprised!



There are reports which appear very frequently in the newspapers, about receiving medical advice on the net. One recent newspaper article gave statistics about how accurate one particular website was in predicting the diagnosis. There are many websites which purportedly ‘treat’ the patient. My own relatives have come to me after taking ‘advice’ from these websites. Off course, it’s a wonderful thing if people find information about their disease conditions and learn more about it, but at the same time people are often misled by the ads or sometimes are even carried away with the information. So I thought I should try and explain how and when internet references may be helpful for an individual.

I myself went through some searches on the net and found that all the websites I referred take extreme caution in making the reader understand that the website in particular is not a substitute for a doctor. They are only to be used as supplements for the advice from a doctor/physician. Some of the sites even ask the reader to go through only such references recommended by his/her physician. They also make it clear that they offer no treatment but they only provide information which may help in understanding the disease condition in a better way. The drugs which are very often ‘prescribed’ are non-prescription drugs which can be bought over the counter. Non –prescription drugs are advised as readily as they have lesser side effects, but the point to be noted here is that they have side effects.

OK fine, websites have to be used only as information portals and not as treatment options, so why is this confusion created if you search for such references?
Obviously, there is a huge load of medical info on the net and trying to access the net for a piece of information may mislead anybody. So how and where do you search for the info? If the info is found, is it the same info which we had wanted? How does one confirm the reliability of the information? The questions may seem very simple, basic and uncomplicated, which they may be, but the answers are absolutely not!

Before we try to untangle the answers to the questions I again make a request to discuss the doubts among the doctor concerned. The web references should only be consulted on the advice of your physician/doctor. On consulting the web pages do not try to glean inferences directly or come to any conclusions without professional help. Well I’m hoping I’m not scaring you guys, I just want to make things clear as I feel this is very important.

As for finding info on the web, the first thing to do is of course Google the specific information required. If you have access to the net through any of the digital libraries or universities it would be ideal as more relevant info can be collected easily as they usually have accesses to journals and publications which are otherwise difficult to enter into. Go through the Google references one by one and select the articles on preference which are from an official website of an Institute/University or the government. Examples for such institutes could be the National Institutes of Health or Centres for Disease Control and Prevention or websites belonging to the government of India. Find out when this particular article was edited as older articles are not very relevant in this fast changing medical age. Small publications/websites may not be believable as the information may not be discussed elaborately. See if you can find articles which have many authors who belong to that particular field only. Find for articles which encourage you to find/interpret the answers rather than which say or mean ‘this is the only answer’ or ‘we are absolutely right’. Publications are more reliable if they have some negatives in them, which tell where they were wrong and which needed to be corrected later on by a second group or individual/s. If you are a professional and want articles for your reference or to quote somewhere look for articles which are ‘peer reviewed’. Articles are better rated if the information is relevant to your specific region, age or sex. I mean the publications are good if they specify region, age or sex related changes. As in any publications articles are good if they do not have spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. This shows that the articles have been closely reviewed or re-written for the benefit of the reader. If you find articles which have statistics and graphs, they should be good as they make the reader understand things more easily. It is better to read full-text articles than just abstracts, as abstracts may mislead you without the full info.

Do not search for medical info on the web in an emergency other than for contact info. Always get professional help in emergencies.

Of course these are only some basic guidelines. It is very much subjective what the individual reader prefers. Even with all this knowledge some people may not find what they had wanted. If you can’t find the relevant info or if you are not satisfied with what you have found out, try again another time or another day with a fresh mind. It only takes a bit of intelligence and a lot of patience to search for medical info on the web.

I would like to know by my medical and non-medical reader friends what kind of medical info they refer/search on the net and how they do it. It would help all of us to share some knowledge. Hope this blog will serve a good purpose.