Surf's UpVolume 12 (1)
Lucy Johnson Bell, Research Librarian, King's Fund Library and
Information Service
The Year 2000 could well have been subtitled the Year of the Consumer.
The advent of Web technology has finally brought the NHS to a situation
where the various visions of consumer/client/user/patient empowerment/involvement/participation/consultation
(depending on your politics and/or semantic leanings) which were discussed
at length in the nineties could actually see the light of day, thanks to
the powers of the Internet. In several other arenas, Web-based communication
and information dissemination have become highly popular over the last
few years (see, for example, the information profession itself, retail,
management consultancy and academia); now, in the noughties, despite the
fact that few of them are truly interactive, the health service has enough
consumer-oriented Web sites to be the envy of the rest of the public sector.
Examples of some of the best, which, incidentally, have recently been added
to the IFHM Web links page follow ...
An article on consumer health information on the Internet cannot proceed
these days - or even get further than the second paragraph in many cases
(including this one) - without mention of the NHS
Direct Online Web site, the fourth virtual floor of the National
electronic Library for Health (NeLH). An easily navigable site,
this has a short home page containing seven main menu items. It is
colourful enough to engage the Web visitor and yet informative enough to
be helpful. One minor problem which seems solvable with this site
is the potentially confusing proliferation of search engines: there is
one for the Healthcare Guide (the part of the site which provides information
on how to treat common conditions), one for the Conditions and Treatments
section (which provides links to other useful information sources, such
as Patient Information Leaflets and national self-help groups), one for
the Healthy Living section (which provides ideas and suggestions for making
changes to your lifestyle) and one for the NHS ATOZ (which provides general
information on the services and benefits provided by the NHS, social services
and the voluntary sector). Nonetheless, it contains much highly useful
information on many aspects of health and wellbeing.
A glut of general consumer health sites has emerged in the last couple
of years, offering many things from online health advice to tools for checking
one's own Body Mass Index (don't go there. Just don't). One
of the better ones is the BBC's health
and fitness online pages. These pages provide information on
health issues specific to particular groups (men, women, children), about
particular conditions (such as back pain, cancer, stroke) and answer health-related
questions (such as 'is fizzy mineral water fattening?'. Personally,
I'd rather know if two large G and Ts pile on the pounds but it takes all
sorts ...). It also has one of those popular Body
Mass Index calculators. Bother.
Other consumer health information sites which are worth a look are:
MEDLINEplus,
the lay person's entry point to the US National Library of Medicine, which
provides reputable health information, links to other good health sites
and several medical and health encylopaediae; Patient
UK, a directory, compiled by two GPs, of UK health Web sites; the 'Help
is at Hand' factsheets from the Royal
College of Psychiatrists, which provide carefully written explanations
of several mental health conditions and advice about what can be done;
and Health in Focus.
Although this latter seems on first glance to have fewer links on its home
page (but is very cleanly designed), it in fact takes the visitor to plenty
of useful information. The majority of the site is made up of factsheets
explaining particular conditions and what people can generally do about
them. Normally, I would worry about the provenance of such advice;
however, Health in Focus, despite originating from a commercial publisher,
makes claims of independence and employs many medics on its editorial board.
If acquiring your information in a very techie way is not your bag then
you can still use the Internet to contact a real, living and breathing
human being. Librarians have, of course, been doing this for simply
ages, through the EARL
Ask a Librarian Service, a 24 hour quick reference service. From
a quick check on their recently answered questions, they know why magnetism
exists, the recipe for Hasty Pudding and the birth date and place of Brett
Anderson, husky-voiced lead singer of popsters Suede. Pharmacists
have also taken up the questions-and-answers baton through the Ask
Your Pharmacist Web site. Pharmacists are often the unsung heroes
of health education and, although this site does not seem to offer an online
questioning facility, it certainly encourages the public to approach their
community pharmacists with health-related dilemmas.
Online consumer information will always complement and never substitute
for other media, such as drop-in centres or leaflets. Inequalities
in access to IT and the Internet will also persist for some time in the
future, with not all the people whom the campaigns wish to target having
access to a PC. This is changing slowly, however, and problems with
IT access have not prevented the Department of Health from advertising
more health improving strategies via the 'Our
Healthier Nation' (OHN) Web site. Indeed, many public
libraries are now providing Internet access within their walls, so
the hope exists that one and all will be able to sample the delights of
OHN and the many other consumer Web sites in the not too distant future.
And so need information professionals worry about all this? Never,
say I! (Or should that be 'never say die' ...?). As there are
so many hundreds (and thousands) of Internet health sites out there, someone
will always have to quality check them, catalogue them, update them, index
them ... And so the role of the librarian continues, creating the sites, reviewing
them and providing access to them ... And if that sounds like it will all take
a long time, have a look at the Longevity
Game from Northwestern Mutual. You might just find out that you
have more time left to do this sort of thing than you thought you had.
Last updated February 2001.
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Inform, 12 (1)
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