An iHealthBeat special report reviewed the growing popularity of medical blogs and their use as a source of online health information.

Robert Wachter, a patient safety expert and author of the blog “Wachter’s World,” said that physician blogs are helpful to doctors but that patients need to use caution about believing what they read online. Information in the blogs may be inaccurate because information about the patients has been changed. Fard Johnmar, founder of Envision Solutions, pointed out that physicians need to change their information and that of their patients to protect their patients’ privacy.

Trisha Torrey, author of the blog “Every Patient’s Advocate,” recommended that patients use government-sponsored sites to ensure reliability.

For the complete special report:
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2007/12/17/Rising-Popularity-of-Medical-Blogs-
Raises-Questions-About-Anonymity-Reliability.aspx?av=1 (must register for free subscription)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Consumer Health, General (all entries), Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.