Longwoods Blog
Fact and Stats
Canadians who use the Internet to search for information on prescription drugs often are directed to pharmaceutical company websites and Wikipedia, while U.S. residents who use Google to search for the same information typically see a top result from the National Library of Medicine, according to a recent study published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
For the study, researchers from the University of British Columbia conducted Web searches on nearly 300 generic and brand-name drugs and found that:
- 85% of the Canadian searches listed Wikipedia as the first search result; and
- 80% of the Canadian searches listed industry websites among their top results.
In comparison, researchers found that about three-quarters of U.S. searches using Google provided drug information from NLM as the top result.
According to the researchers, the Canadian search results could pose risks because Wikipedia often lacks certain information on medications, and drug companies might omit warnings on adverse side effects.
The difference likely stems from a partnership that Google and NIH formed last year to provide U.S. Internet users with NLM drug information at the top of their search results. The Canadian government does not have any similar partnerships with online search engines.
Source: The Sources and Popularity of Online Drug Information: An Analysis of Top Search Engine Results and Web Page Views
Date: February 22, 2010
Around the World
Croatia: ePrescriptions Introduced Ahead of Schedule
Italy: Arrhythmia Treated with Electrode Patches
EU: eHealth Poised for Advances In 2011
Estonia: Medical Prescription Centre Wins National eHealth Award
News from Canada
Province Launches eChart Manitoba
IT Healthcare Canada Conference and Exhibition – Call for Abstracts
Trends
iPhone Works for CT colonography reading
KLAS Report: Enterprise Scheduling – Best-of-Breeds and Shifting Provider Strategies
Industry Speak
Westminster shares info with Vision 360
Philips to Grow its Presence in the Anesthesia Market with the Acquisition of Dameca
IBM Behind NBN-Powered e-Health Push
Canadian Market Research
Access up-to-date market intelligence on the Canadian healthcare IT landscape based on data from the HIMSS Analytics Canadian DatabaseSM. Research that can help healthcare IT vendors and consultants expand into the Canadian market and become more competitive in the space. ITAC members receive a 15% discount. For more information click here.
Infoway Update
Find Out What’s New and Happening at Canada Health Infoway
Worth Noting
Doctors 2.0™ & You (Paris, France)
13th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME’11)
World Health Care Congress—Europe 2011
Know. Learn. Implement. Subscribe to the Longwoods eLetter.
eHealthRecord.info brings you the latest news, best practices, policy and ideas in eHealth. The subject is salient to advancing the quality of care; our objective is to provide you with clarity and to keep you current. eHealthRecord.info is published every two weeks. You can, of course, opt in [or out] anytime; just click here. Send this to a colleague who might be interested; they too can just sign up. Tell us what you think or what you would like included: email the editor.
eHealthRecord.info is made possible by an educational grant from:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Longwoods Online.