With Revolution Health launching its new consumer portal, a newspaper reporter called me earlier this week to ask what I thought about new efforts such as this….

It’s clear to me that—even though they generally don’t express it this way—consumers are clamoring for information therapy (Ix). And just to be clear, Ix is not simply a shorthand for health information. Ix involves delivering information targeted to a person’s specific moment in care and tailored to the individual’s particular needs.

A wide variety of consumer research makes it clear that consumers are hungry for health information. For example, Susannah Fox from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org) has previously described a “Dr. Google phenomenon” in that, in a typical day, more people go online to get health information than visit doctors to get answers to their health questions.

I fully support the democratization of information ushered in by the Internet and other forces, but I also realize that it’s not fulfilling the needs of many consumers. Most consumers aren’t interested in generic health information. They want answers to specific questions at a particular moment in care that relate to people in their specific circumstances.

To date, the Internet hasn’t delivered that. It’s akin to having a garden with plants, flowers and vegetables that need varying amounts of water and the weather gods delivering a monsoon.

Part of the reason that the term “information therapy” has value is because of the corollaries between it and medication therapy. Information overload can result in an “overdose.” Consumers reading the wrong information can experience negative “side effects.” The right kind and amount of information depends on the specific individual, which means that we often need to “titrate the dosage,” much the same way doctors might adjust the dose of warfarin (Coumadin) for patients with atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat).

Going online for health information generally involves (at least) four challenges. First, can you find the information you need? Again, it’s not hard to find information, but it’s another thing to find it highly specific to your need at a particular time. Once you find it, do you understand it? Has it been provided to you in a way that you can make sense of it? Third, there’s the issue of whether you can remember it.

Finally, even if you can find, understand and remember the information you need, you still may need help in contextualizing it for your own situation. That’s why there often is value in having your personal health library as part of bidirectional communication system with your clinician (of multidirectional to the extent that it involves multiple care professionals). With all that in place, then you’re ready to act on the information to improve your health, decision making and healthy behaviors.

The answer I had to give to the reporter is “I don’t know.” It’s far too early to tell whether Revolution or Google Health will create the kind of navigational support that will guide consumers to the Ix they need. At the very least, however, the fact that people with the resources of Steve Case and Google are pouring money into finding answers tells us that there’s a lot of interest in figuring this out.

There’s no doubt that much research remains to better understand what the optimal dose, frequency, and duration of information prescribing is for people in different circumstances. We are beginning to pursue this as part of our Ix research agenda and, when we figure it out, we’ll be sure to let you know.

–Josh

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Health 2.0 Space, PHRs, Patient-Clinician Relationship, The Media and Information Therapy (Ix), The New Health Care Consumer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.