Emakina Academy / Ipsos

Health-related Web search habits – April 2010

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Health-related Web search habits

A recent Belgian study


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Presentation of the survey

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Objectives

Assess how Belgian people use Internet for Health-related information and pharma products purchase.

On-line interview from the IPSOS Access Panel.

1000 respondents, representative for the national population aged 18-65 years.

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Methodology


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Sample’s profile

18-34

Higher Upper

FR

Urban Non urban

YES NO

35-54 55+

Male Female

FL

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Results

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Internet consultation frequency

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88% have already searched for health-related information on the Web

29% search for health-related info every week

N=1000


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Motivation to consult the Web for health-related info

First Top 3

49% are primarily

searching info about

symptoms / problems they

personally suffer from

N=884


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Research modeN=884

Q4. Le plus souvent, lorsque vous consultez Internet sur des matières de santé, démarrez-vous votre recherche par un moteur de recherche (Google, …) ou vous rendez-vous directement sur un site spécifique?


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Health-related visited sitesN=884


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Confidence towards available sites

N=884 First Top 3

Q6. Parmi ces différents types de sites, auquel accordez-vous le plus de confiance?


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Confidence criteriaN=884Q7. Lorsque vous recherchez de l’information sur la santé ou des médicaments sur Internet, sur quels critères

vous basez-vous pour évaluer la qualité, le sérieux et la crédibilité de ce que vous trouvez?


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On-line medicines purchaseN = 1000

Q8. Avez-vous déjà acheté des médicaments par Internet?

OTC or RX ?


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Types of medicines bought on-lineN = 40


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Reasons for buying medicines on-lineN = 40


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79

79

73

71

62

55

51

26

8

482

55

31

12

18

13

7

6

5

6 55%

65%

63%

40%

33%

65%

33%

45%

35%

10%

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Some opinions about on-line medicines purchaseN = 1000

No danger

Same good quality as products bought in pharmacy

No instruction from a doctor or pharmacist

Contra-indications should initially be checked

Are likely to be counterfeits of less quality

Risks of harmful abuses

Only through sites with recognized quality label

Take care to have a complete scientific note

No control of the expiry date

Access to very good drugs not availablein Belgium

Disagree AgreeBuyers (N=40)


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Internet site of my pharmacistN = 1000

Q14. Does your pharmacist have an Internet site?

Q15. Would you find this useful?


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Motivations towards a pharmacist siteN = 598 who would find this useful


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Complementary results from a Microsoft research in the U.S. *

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http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/ryenw/papers/WhiteTOIS2009.pdf

Ryen White and Eric HorvitzNovember 2008


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Cyberchondria

About the Web potential to increase consumers’ anxiety when Web search is employed as a diagnostic procedure.

“Cyberchondria” refers to this unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology.

Characterize the nature & frequency of the escalation of concerns starting from common & innocuous symptoms

Study the effects of cyberchondria over time

A log-based methodology allowing to examine at scale how people interact with medical information.

Supported by a survey of 515 individuals’ health related search experiences(Starting from 5000 randomly selected Microsoft Corporation employees).

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Methodology

Objectives


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Some results

OBSERVATION

2% of all queries were health related

78% of all queries related to a medical symptom occur within 2 weeks of the initial query for that symptom searches for symptoms may occur in a bursty manner

HEALTH RELATED SEARCH HABITS(experience of 515 people who had performed at least 1 search for health-related info)

Average of 10 health-related Web searches per month,2 of them being for professionally undiagnosed medical conditions

58% are primarily searching health-related info for themselves,40% for relative, friend or work colleague

86% of searches are for info on symptoms49% for info on serious medical conditions42% for a medical diagnosis38% for others’ experience of similar conditions

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HEALTH-RELATED ANXIETY

How often do your Web searches for symptoms / basic medical conditions lead to your review of content on serious illnesses?

PERSISTENCE & INTERRUPTION

Some results

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Your queries for that seriousIllness persist then over weeks,

months or years

This escalation has interruptedyour online activity

This escalation has interruptedyour other activities


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Some results

SEARCHES FOR DIAGNOSES

If your queries contain medical symptoms, how often do you consider the ranking of Web search results as indicating the likelihood of the illnesses, with more likely diseases appearing higher up on the result page(s)?

In 73% of the cases, the appointment reassured them that their worries were not justified

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o 25% have used Web search as a medical expert system where one inputs symptoms and expects to review possible diseases ranked by likelihood

o 24% believe they’ve been in the situation where Web content “put them over the threshold” for scheduling an appointment with a health professional, when they would likely have not sought professional attention if they had not reviewed Web content


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Some results

SOURCES OF ANXIETY & CONTRIBUTION OF CONTENT FEATURES

What was your anxiety related to?

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What was it about the content of those pages that contributed to your anxiety?


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Conclusions

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Escalation of medical concerns is potentially related to the amount and distribution of medical content viewed by users, the presence of escalatory terminology in pages visited, and a user’s predisposition to escalate or seek more reasonable explanations for ailments

Persistence of concerns following an escalation and the effect that such ongoing concerns could have on interrupting users’ activities over a prolonged period of time

Search engine architects have a responsibility to ensure that searchers do not experience unnecessary concern generated by the definition of relevance and the ranking algorithms their engines use

They must focus on serving medical search results that are reliable, complete and timely, as well as topically relevant

Health & Medicine

Emakina Academy / Ipsos