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updated 07 June 2004

US Doctors Shun the Net 

Two recent US surveys by Forrester Research and the American Medical Association show less than 40% of doctors use the internet as part of their practice.

• Among the reasons given are:
• Doctors see email contact with patients as an unpaid extra burden
• time spent on discussing information patients have found on the web
• inability to differentiate reliable from unreliable information
• dubious online drug stores

The respondents did react more favourably to online medical research, especially at nonprofit, government, and tightly-restricted, physicians-only sites, and quality internet based continuing medical education.

This is despite the fact that internet access in the US is more widespread, cheaper and more accepted as part of life than it is here in Europe, and they have access to government sponsored reliable information from such organisations as the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There is a clear lesson for European governments here. No matter how easy they make internet access for clinicians, unless there is well provenanced, comprehensive information out there, clinicians are not going to use it.

David Rayne
22.5.00

Forrester Research http://www.forrester.com/
American Medical Association http://www.ama-assn.org/
National Institutes of Health http://www.nih.gov/
National Library of Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/