The Empowered E-Patient is a recent project InfoNewt (my company) did for the Path of the Blue Eye Project. The statistics are compelling, and certainly support that e-patients are now mainstream.
In 2000, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 25% of Americans searched online for health information. Today, 61% rely on the Web for medical and health content. Americans’ growing reliance on Dr. Google and Nurse Yahoo! has led to profound changes in how health organizations and providers relate to and communicate with consumers.
Notably, this infographic provides information on e-patient social media communications from a Project-produced research report, “Communicating with the Empowered E-Patient.” This report is available free of charge to individuals making regular contributions to the Project’s knowledge community, Living the Path. Learn more about how to access this report here.
One of the challenges was defining not only what is an e-patient, but also what is the correct term to refer to these people looking up medical information online. We ended up using Google to determine which terms are used most commonly, and the title ‘e-patient” was clearly the term used most often.
Thanks to Fard and the team at Enspektos.com. There’s much more information available at the Path of the Blue Eye Project.