Doctors, patients, and the inexorable force of the Internet
From Salon: Doctors need to be aware of widespread health misinformation on the Web, because patients are going to find it. Although the article is pitched as “Internet information is good for patients and doctors”, the misinformation aspect it its major point.
And a good point. This is a basic tenet among the people who study end users of software and web applications, who do user-centered design, human-computer interaction, usability studies, etc: You have to design your approach for what people are going to do. Designing (whether it be software/web applications or any kind of information delivery) for what you think they ought to do is an approach destined for failure.
And you can’t stop the Internet. It spreads information, and misinformation, like nothing else.
(On the other hand, calling doctors who don’t get this - like the article does - ow. Good way to piss people off. Doctors are end users of information, too, and starting off your approach with an insult, maybe not so effective.)
January 10 2008 08:39 am | |
Jane on 10 Jan 2008 at 11:01 am #
As long as Doctor’s think and act as if they are the last profession that operates with impunity, we will have doctors like the one mentioned in this article. All healtcare professinals, doctors included, need to come up to speed with the technology availabe to them. The interenet is not just for vacation planning and checking stock prices. it is a tool that is coming into its own and will explode in the near future. The author is correct when he states that the medical community needs to put information on the web and direct patients how to acxess it. When this starts to happen, they will trully do no harm.