The rate of consumers using social media in their healthcare journey is growing exponentially. A recent survey shows that consumers looking at health information online, and they’re using various sources to do so. Consumers are looking to the web not only for clinical information and guidance, but also for support communities.
In many industries, mobile is the preferred method for looking up information. However, healthcare is behind the ball in this trend – 90% of these online health queries are done from a personal computer, while 7% were via a mobile phone and only 4% on a tablet. PC and mobile device users also have different browsing habits – 52% of desktop searchers versus 31% of mobile users visited medical websites after a doctor’s diagnosis, while 43% of the mobile group and only 24% of the computer group visited such sites after only experiencing symptoms.
Luckily, consumers seem to be practicing discretion in determining the trustworthiness of the health information they find online. While 56% of Americans report using WebMD for medical guidance, only 33% trust such medical websites as a credible source. Government websites are trusted nearly as much (33%), along with a personal recommendation from someone they know (33%). TV advertisements (27%) are trusted slightly less, while magazine ads (14%), digital ads (13%) and discounts (16%) are much lower. A reported 31% of Americans visit Wikipedia for health information, whose user-submitted content is not always credible.
Social networking sites appear to be trusted utilized far less for medical information than other online sources: 17% of people searching for medical information online use Facebook, 15% use YouTube, 13% view blogs, and 6% look at Twitter feeds.
Personally, I was surprised by the overwhelming majority of users preferring to look up information on a computer versus a mobile device. What statistics did you find surprising?
