Patterns of Internet use by gastroenterologists in the management and education of patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

AIMS

To define the patterns of Internet use among physicians who treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and physicians' perceptions of their patients' Internet use.

METHODS

An online survey about physician and patient use of the Internet was created and e-mailed to gastroenterologists nationwide. Surveys were distributed and collected via an online database and a subsequent statistical analysis was performed.

RESULTS

Of the 1000 e-mail invitations sent to practicing gastroenterologists in the United States, 223 participants (22.3%) completed the survey. A total of 183 (82.1%) physicians reported using an Internet-based reference to assist them in deriving management strategies for their patients with IBD, with the most commonly utilized resource being UpToDate followed by PubMed and the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America Web site. Although nearly 80% of gastroenterologists believed that using the Internet helped them facilitate clinical discussions, 183 participants (82.1%) believed that inaccurate information found online could sometimes result in increased clinic time because physicians must spend more time dispelling misleading information.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite a study design biased toward selecting gastroenterologists who commonly used the Internet, we demonstrated that only 60% of the providers routinely refer their patients to the Internet. This underscores the fact that it is important to have a centralized "physician-certified" online resource to which physicians could readily refer their patients to navigate through various disease-specific resources without concern that their patients are receiving unreliable or misleading information.