As many of you know, last month I ran the Chicago Marathon. Well...this summer while I was doing some sprint training at the Harvard track, I felt a painful tightness in the back of my leg, which immediately forced me to stop running. Not really knowing exactly what happened I turned to WebMD.com. Within minutes I knew that I had a mild hamstring strain and I knew exactly how to treat it. The WebMD.com tools such as Symptom Checker and Blogs & Boards make it incredibly easy and cheap for people to gather information about health conditions. With that said, there are some serious drawbacks to this technology. For example, patients could potentially misdiagnose a lifethreating illness!
This morning I read an article in the Boston Globe and patients have now taken online social networking to a new level with PatientsLikeMe.com .
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2008/11/16/through_website_patients_creating_own_drug_studies/
Although this website is limited to only a few chronic diseases/disorders, the information is really amazing! I started by searching a treatment for major depressive disorder; Pristiq - I sell this product. The information I found was amazing...patients were regularly posting anecdotal information such as side effects, results etc of their treatment. The information is meticulously organized into graphs and charts. It seems like a useful website but my concern is that people will substitute physician directed therapy and self treat, which could be dangerous for diseases like major depressive disorder.
Also, I think it would be really interesting to conduct a study to see if these web ites have a therapeutic effect that could supplement pharmacotherapy.
