MarketingCharts reports on a study about how consumers are looking up health information online:
The latest Harris Poll, measuring how many people use the Internet to look for information about health topics, finds that the numbers continue to increase. The Harris Poll first used the word Cyberchondriacs to describe these people in 1998, when just over 50 million American adults had ever gone online to look for health information. By 2005, that number had risen to 117 million. In the new poll, the number of Cyberchondriacs has jumped to 175 million from 154 million last year, possibly as a result of the health care reform debate. Furthermore, frequency of usage has also increased. Fully 32% of all adults who are online say they look for health information “often,” compared to 22% last year.
6 in 10 Online Adults Looks Up Health Info 1-5 Times/Month
Thirty-three percent of online adults say they have looked up health information one or two times in the past month, with another 26% saying they have looked up health information three to five times. This means that a combined 59% of online adults have looked up health information between one and five times in the past month.
If your company serves the healthcare industry or provides any kind of healthcare services, it’s essential to determine whether your information is easy to find, consume and share online. If not, you’re making it difficult to attract and engage your customers.
Source: MarketingCharts