I was speaking yesterday at the World Congress Leadership Summit on Consumer Connectivity & Web Empowerment. Another speaker, the always informative and engaging Susannah Fox, Associate Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, shared several interesting pieces of data.

What resonated most with me (but certainly didn’t surprise me based on past data I’ve seen from other sources) was that–despite consumers’ embracing of the Internet for health information searching–they still want to get information from their clinicians. Pew survey data revealed that, for 80% of consumers, their first choice of where they’d like to get information is from a health care professional.

Why? I believe that consumers are hungry for information related to their specific health care concerns but the Web, by itself, can’t give them everything they’re looking for. Specifically, they need guidance or navigation–what information can they trust and which content is right for them.

Just as importantly, they don’t want to have parallel tracks of information gathering–one online and the other when they go into the doctor’s office. They know how important information (and the management, understanding and using of that information) is to their health, and they want it it well integrated into the other aspects of their care.

This is the crux of information therapy (Ix). The vision for what this should look like and the “how you do it” are the central goals of our June 12-13 7th Annual Ix Conference, “WIxRED: Next-Generation Patient-Centered Care.” If you’re interested in this subject, there is no better place to learn, explore, and engage with like-minded people coming from a wide array of perspectives (register here). You can find all the specifics on each session by clicking on the conference agenda.

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