Dr Martin Schulz (head of drug information and pharmacy practice, Germany) said that keeping up to date was hard. Each year there were around six million papers published, and a quarter to one million clinical trials and 9,000 randomised controlled trials. He warned: “Just because you read it, doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Variation
In 1999, there were around 200 million internet users. The projected figure
for 2001 was 330 million and this was expected to peak by 2005 at 700 million
users. Of internet inquiries, 50 per cent sought medical or drug information.
There was much European variation in the numbers of people on-line: in some
countries it was around 10 per cent whereas in others 42 per cent of the population
were regular internet users. There were an estimated 800 million web sites world-wide
and this figure changed hourly. So, a new generation of better informed patients
was emerging.
Patients were, however, unable to discern between all the information sources.
One of the problems was whether patients could trust information from the internet.
Dr Schulz highlighted the problem of internet user demographics versus patient
demographics. The typical internet user tended to be under 35 years old, male,
with English as the main language and a good income. The typical patient tended
to be over 65 years old, female, whose native language was not necessarily English,
and who had a low income. Thus, the average patient might become confused by
internet information and would require help to sift through “the good,
the bad and the ugly” sources.
The example of St John’s wort illustrated what he meant. The primary concern
was that patients and carers might use the information to make the wrong decisions.
They might not be able to recognise deficiencies and bias in what they accessed
on the internet. Also, some web-sites were not updated regularly and therefore
might not contain information on the latest developments, especially with regard
to drug safety and recalls.