The Benefits of Online Consultations
People have been seeking online health advice since the internet began.
It is perfectly legal, and it often provides people with important medical information. In 2013, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 35% of US adults go online specifically to try to find out what medical condition they (or someone else) may have.
Pew asked participants about the accuracy of initial diagnoses, and the results were telling: 41% of online diagnosis-seekers said a medical professional confirmed their diagnosis, with a further 2% saying the diagnosis was partially confirmed by a medical professional. Thirty-five percent said they did not visit a medical provider to obtain a professional opinion, and only 18% of people seeking health information online reported a medical professional offered a different opinion about the health condition.
The groups most likely to go online in search of medical information were women, younger people, white people, those in households earning more than $75,000 a year, and those with college or post-graduate degrees. Here are some of the benefits and advantages of online health consultations.
Advantage: Few Location or Time Boundaries
By going online, people can gain access to medical professionals that might otherwise not be available based on geography or time constraints. People in rural areas, or who work shifts that make accessing traditional healthcare difficult can benefit from accessing medical consultations online. Furthermore, online consultations act as a backstop to other information found online by individuals. While reading medical articles online can be valuable, it’s not a substitute for an actual consultation. Online consultations act as a check on self-diagnoses.
Many men are more comfortable consulting with a doctor from the privacy of their home.
It’s often easier to bring up sensitive medical topics with online consultants than with a doctor who knows you. If you’re seeking information on sexual health, erectile dysfunction, a weight problem, or cosmetic problems like acne, it’s not always easy to make that call for an in-person consultation. Online consultations offer a greater level of privacy, and a legitimate online consultation offers the strictest online privacy standards both for information exchanged and products ordered online.
Why you need to be online to grow your medical practice?
- 78% of adults access the internet every day or almost every day in the UK [1]
- 49% of adults looked for health-related information online in 2015. In 2007–18% [1]
- 43% of patients have searched online prior to seeing a doctor.
- 33 100 — the number of searches “GP near me” in Google.co.uk in September 2016 [2] The growing popularity of searched keyword shows graph below [3]
5. 135 000 the number of queries with the keyword “depression” in Google.co.uk in September 2016 [2]
What Research on Online Medicine Shows
Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor at Harvard, conducted studies on convenience and cost for online, or “e-visits” to medical consultants. While patients in Mehrotra’s studies interacted with their own doctors or doctors in the same practice online, the results were encouraging for the two conditions studied: sinusitis and urinary tract infections. Mehrotra’s team found that diagnosis and treatment were equally successful in e-visits and traditional visits for patients with these conditions.
References:
[2] Data from Google AdWords Keyword Planner
[3] Google Trends data https://www.google.com/trends/
