Health and the Web a Brief Introduction

Health is critical to all of us. It is a very broad topic, if you think about it there are different types of sicknesses, different types of ways to cure, and different ways to get information on how to cure. Today there is a lot of emphasis on good health. You can go to a doctor’s office, a hospital, or a specialist, but in our technological world today, a lot of answers could be found on the World Wide Web.

People have started to use this as their first source to investigate an illness or obtain general health information. If you think about it, it makes sense. Why would you go wait in a room for an hour, with all these sick people just to see a doctor who is probably going to tell you something that you could have researched and found the answer for via the Internet. Well that seems like a reasonable thing to do in a busy world we live in. But the fact is all the information that you read on the Internet is not correct. How do we know that the information is correct? Does it come from a medical authority or from a reputable source?

There are many sources of information on the web, submitted by different people and overall we do not know for sure that what we read is true. Another problem with getting information off the web is that there are different scams on the Internet. For example, if someone wants you to buy a weight loss pill or product over the net you don’t know if what they are saying is true and if the testimonials are real because there is no “police” over the net. Regarding information, one doesn’t know if a product works or doesn’t work the way it is advertised or if the instructions to deal with a health issue works or causes more damage.

I’m interested in your experience with health and the Internet. How can we address the issue with making sure what we obtain is valid, correct information and that we are not mislead?