While diagnoses are still made at clinics and hospitals, more and more individuals find themselves navigating through online, public medical databases to determine the cause of their symptoms. Sites like WebMD and Mayo Clinic help provide non-clinicians medical information they can use to gain insight into their illness or disease. To some, this domesticity of medicine is helpful, as it provides a conduit through which everyday individuals can understand pathogens and how their body reacts to them. If the illness can be preliminarily evaluated and treated with over-the-counter medications, these sites allow would-be patients to manage their symptoms at home rather than rush to a possibly inundated triage room. And even if the illness is indeed serious, at least the individual who has done prior online research can present a greater understanding of his or her prognosis to the their physician.
However, while these “do-it-yourself” medical sites do offer advantages, even a slight flaw or erroneous presentation of data can be life-altering. Indeed, these sites are not always correct and, more often than not, they can prove inaccurate. According to one study, governmental medical websites are inaccurate 19.9 percent of the time and medical blogs are inaccurate 69.1 percent of the time. Physicians and hospitals do not want people staying at home simply because a website tells them their illness or disease is easily managed. Furthermore, those who resist to the democratization of inaccurate medical knowledge believe the ease by which individuals can access medical information leads to hypochondriasis — the tendency to unfoundedly diagnose one’s self. Therefore, it is necessary for the medical field to reform these new pseudo-diagnostician websites and install a system of checks and balances that prevents individuals from receiving inaccurate medical information.
As online technology assumes a greater presence in our daily lives, the medical field has also been greatly affected by the dissemination of online information. Broadly speaking, it’s impossible to decelerate the effect of technology in medicine. Technology has helped the medical field with electronic health records, optimization of ultrasounds, MRIs, CT scans and increased efficiency of hospital workflow. The increased accessibility of online medical information is also a technological innovation for medicine, with medical sites like Mayo Clinic and WebMD — both accredited and systematically reviewed by physicians — having revolutionized how medical information is disseminated. Yet there are several similarly functioning medical websites which aren’t accredited or reviewed. Therefore, a system of checks and balances could really help to ensure these websites are maintained appropriately.
While physicians are responsible for patients in their domain of treatment, the inclusion of computers and dissemination of medical information through websites and medical blogs has necessitated they take on greater roles. Just as academic physicians engage in clinical research, there should also be active medical research oriented to moderating these medical sites. Several physicians could even take on part-time consulting occupations with the companies behind the lesser known sites to ensure accurate information is being disseminated to the masses. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that.
Websites like Healthline have to be cooperative with these physicians, and have to be willing to be censored such that no false sense of security or inaccurate information is being spread. With the internet so vast and the quantity of medical sites perhaps equally as expansive, it becomes increasingly difficult to censor all of them. While censoring is perhaps a vile word to those in the journalism realm, such sites are not journalistic in nature. Censoring is a necessary and absolute precaution to take when the words on these sites can quite literally result in life or death.
To ensure there is ample motivation for the implementation of accurate medical websites and dissemination of information, laws specifically for medical websites must be written and passed. As currently written, the laws that censor websites are ill-advised due to backlash from the First Amendment proponents and those that are more rigid do not effectively target medical websites and blogs. Rather, the democratization of medical knowledge has necessitated specific and relevant laws that ensure that medical information on the internet is being reviewed by both clinicians and governmental agencies. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation could modify the Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier to monitor medical websites and blogs.
As more individuals become increasingly connected through the internet, it is important to ensure that institutions attempt (and succeed) to keep up. Especially in the medical domain, where even a slight error can cause a fatality, a greater effort by an individual’s doctor or healthcare team must be instantiated to ensure we continue to uphold strong communal public health for ourselves and future generations.
Sean Sequeira is a Viewpoint writer.
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