There are already terabytes of data online and sometimes it is difficult to differentiate among true/false and relevant/irrelevant data. Although doing so is especially important in the case of medicine and healthcare since the well-being of people is at stake. So it is high time to show my top 10 choices when it comes to online medical resources.
The internet is the infinite storehouse of inconceivable products of the human mind. Would you like to watch a dog playing the piano? Would you like to buy an inflatable blue spaceship from Star Wars? You can find (almost) everything online, which is great but at the same time it means that it is difficult to distinguish useful data from junk information.
This phenomenon is even more valid in the case of healthcare information and patient data, especially keeping in mind that nowadays every patient does a search for their symptoms and treatments online. However, most medical professionals have never had training about digital literacy and thus cannot help their patients how to surf through the irrelevant to find the most useful tips, tricks, treatments, doctors or pills.
As technological development empowers patients, they are taking care of their health in a more active way which means they have the means and also the willpower to become experts concerning their own life and health.
There is already a myriad of online resources and it’s a challenge how to choose the best for the specific individual needs. There is also way too much social communication in healthcare and it is difficult to follow and filter information. This is the reason why for example Symplur started to track thousands of relevant healthcare hashtags to give real-time access to patients, doctors and other stakeholders to more than a billion healthcare social media data points.
