Siow T R, Soh I P, Sreedharan S, Das De S, Tan P P, Seow A, Lun K C
Department of Community, Occupational and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine MD3, 16 Medical Drive, Singapore 117597.
Ann Acad Med Singap. 2003 Nov;32(6):807-13.
The Internet is an increasingly popular source of healthcare information. This study describes the prevalence of health surfers in Singapore and their health-surfing patterns. It also assesses their confidence in online health information and the impact the Internet has on health-seeking behaviour.
A cross-sectional survey using a standardised questionnaire was carried out among residents aged 13 to 55 years in 1852 units in Bishan North. These units were selected by single-stage simple random cluster sampling method.
The household response rate was 51% (n = 950) and the individual response rate was 69% (n = 1646). Responding and non-responding households were similar in terms of ethnicity and housing type. Of the responders, 62.9% surfed the Internet and 37.7% have surfed for health information. Health surfers tended to be younger (20 to 39 years) and have higher education status. Indians were also more likely than other ethnic groups to surf for health. Professional health-related sites comprised the majority (68%) of sites visited, and the most common search keywords concern chronic degenerative diseases, e.g. hypertension. The top preferred sources of health information were doctors (25.9%), the Internet (25.3%) and the traditional mass media (20.5%). Almost half (45.1%) considered online health information trustworthy if it was from a professional source or if the website displayed the source, while 10.6% trusted the information if it concurred with the doctors' advice. The vast majority (91.7%) had taken some action in response to the information.
The Internet is being used as an accessible source of health information by a substantial proportion of the lay public. While this can facilitate greater partnership in healthcare, it underlines the need for doctors to be pro-active in the practice of evidence-based medicine, and for guidelines to enable patients to use this tool in a discerning manner.
互联网作为医疗保健信息来源越来越受欢迎。本研究描述了新加坡健康信息浏览者的患病率及其健康信息浏览模式。它还评估了他们对在线健康信息的信心以及互联网对寻求医疗行为的影响。
采用标准化问卷对碧山北1852个单元中13至55岁的居民进行横断面调查。这些单元采用单阶段简单随机整群抽样方法选取。
家庭回复率为51%（n = 950），个人回复率为69%（n = 1646）。回复和未回复的家庭在种族和住房类型方面相似。在回复者中，62.9%的人上网，37.7%的人浏览过健康信息。健康信息浏览者往往更年轻（20至39岁）且教育程度较高。印度人比其他种族更有可能浏览健康信息。专业健康相关网站占访问网站的大多数（68%），最常见的搜索关键词涉及慢性退行性疾病，如高血压。最受欢迎的健康信息来源是医生（25.9%）、互联网（25.3%）和传统大众媒体（20.5%）。几乎一半（45.1%）的人认为如果在线健康信息来自专业来源或网站显示了来源，那么这些信息是可信的，而10.6%的人在信息与医生建议一致时信任这些信息。绝大多数（91.7%）的人已根据这些信息采取了一些行动。
相当一部分普通公众将互联网用作可获取的健康信息来源。虽然这有助于促进医疗保健领域更大的合作，但这突出表明医生需要积极践行循证医学，并且需要制定指导方针以使患者能够明智地使用这一工具。
