(first published on the Health Care Blog)
They said it couldn’t happen in Europe, that social media and online tools wouldn’t catch on, because the healthcare context was soooo different from the US. They said that Europeans don’t worry about access and cost, that they aren’t looking for information online because they they trust their doctors utterly and fully, and that European doctors don’t go online, except if they're Scandinavian. Well, it just isn’t so!
True collective intelligence will tell you that participatory medicine is a natural human instinct and that Health 2.0 is kicking up a storm in Europe this winter! Consumers and professionals are generating content everywhere, even though they don't necessarily cross language or country borders. Unfortunately, no one European organization is studying consumer health Internet usage trends on the same basis year after year, as is the Pew Foundation in the U.S. Nonetheless, there is empiric proof; during the current flu epidemic, information from informal sources in Europe is fully surpassing official data. Wikipedia is cited in a recent study by Manhattan Research as one of the most regularly used sites for physicians and consumers across Europe. Private initiative has generated many significant consumer/patient communities, several major physician community portals, online consultation sites, and more.
But, while users are generally "with it", Europe institutions are not. What is at stake is the future of ill-prepared healthcare organizations and institutions and the regulated healthcare industries.
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Denise - can you point me to sites where patients go to discuss treatments? Would be interested in any popular ones (general or disease-specific) in France, UK, Italy, Germany. Thanks.
Posted by: Bunny Ellerin | 17 December 2009 at 20:03
Hi Bunny ! There are quite a few.
What are you doing with this information?
Posted by: Denise Silber | 17 December 2009 at 20:42