Is every health information on internet reliable?

You wanted to know whether your fever was dengue or malaria and you just asked to Dr.Google instead of lab tests on the basis of your symptoms. Sometimes your headache search results also lead to cerebral palsy. That is how we are too much reliable on Internet sources. Today, people are making Google a tool to doubt doctors. They cannot trust their own doctors as much as they trust the mobile in their hands. The availability of easy-to-use and cheap Internet may also force us to take advantage of this. 90% of the patients with 18 to 24 years age range trust medical information on social media. I said social media, not a medical journal. Medical journals are enriched with knowledge sources which may be indigestible for the most of people. All want everything on their fingertips. So day by day it's being a vast platform for the consumers to obtain the right information and knowledge to fulfill their queries.

Everything is marketed online and the online publicity is now the major tool to engage with the mass. In this e-era health also shares major part of marketing from multiple companies. As health is one of the few elements to attach with emotionally, people get easily attached to it. But you shouldn't trust them blindly. You need to figure out whether it's trustworthy or not. Here are some points you can use to filter the authentic information from the internet for your health queries. Please go through it thoroughly.

1. Who is the author?

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First ever thing you should notice while visiting a site for the health information is the writer of that information. Is it really written by a health professional or just posted by someone who even don't know what s/he has posted? You must check the designation and the profile of the author. It helps you to check the authenticity of the information provided to you. You don't want any information of cardiovascular disease detailed by an astrologer. It is the primary thing you should take care of. Even on social media contents please check the profile of the post writer and then share or forward it. Ethically it's a big crime to share wrong information to the major community.

2. For whom is it written?

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I read an article on severe anemic crisis and the reasons for it. But this article was an research article based on the survey made by a scholar and it was for a specific area of US. Yes the scholar was representing the true events but the area he specified was limited and fixed. So I can't use the entire research or review as it is for India. Here geographical indications are equally important. There may be difference in the physiological activities of the people from different regions on the earth and that's why they need some alterations in the study. You can't imagine the same criteria for all by ignoring the atmospheric, geographical and physiological factors. So here you may get a trustworthy author but it will be none of your use if it isn't written for your geographical community.

3.Who sponsored the site?

When you are looking for the side effects of a medicine and you find a site of a brand, then there is a very low possibility of any negative information regarding that branded medicine. The company don't want to share the things which may affect the sells of the product. You must be assured by the written information that it is written for the knowledge sharing purpose rather than marketing purpose. We see so many advertisements on television about several products but these advertisements contain more entertainment and less product information. So by watching such advertisements on television or social media networks we shouldn't get convinced for that product, especially when that product belongs to our health. Whenever you visit a trusted site or blog, please go through the 'about us' section to figure out the objective and vision of the searched website or author.

4. When was it written?

You are searching the mortality due to virus in India and you found a popular information on very first page of google. But that information don't include the deaths due to Swinflu, Nipah or Congo Red epidemics. Because the information was uploaded fifteen years ago and these disasters we are facing from last 3 to 4 years only. So you won't get the actual near to real time data from that search. The date of the written article matters a lot in this sense. Nothing is permanent in this world and the technology is boosting this change rapidly. Every year policies are changed frequently. You can't follow any guideline of 2018 if you have that of 2019.  In this case we must have to be updated with day to day progress in the field rather than trusting the old data.

5. What is the privacy policy?

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We are online advise seekers. Everything we want to solve on our keypads. By using this drive of consumers many online applications and medical services are rising on the web platform. These services help you personally by answering your queries. But for the better solution they ask you some of your personal informations. In this case you must be aware of the personal data you are sharing. You must check the privacy policy of the service provider. Many apps are providing the speciality doctors to answer your queries online and in return they acquire the maximum personal data as they need to understand your query perfectly. Though it's not that much threatening, you don't want to share the status of your gonorrhoea publicly at least.

Is it really solving your problem?

After filtering all of above reasons, is Dr.Google really helping us out? You are pretty sure about all above parameters still you can't encash the information properly if you don't know the baseline. If you are a health professional or a medical or  a paramedical student, you can understand the shared terminologies exactly. If you don't know the basics, please consult your professionals before you trust that online knowledge. Because the first and last objective of our health queries is to solve the problem efficiently and appropriately. In the era of apps and social media influencers we must be aware of data we are sharing on this e-platform because the right and liquid explanation may fullfill the queries of mass but at the same time some of the wrong blunders and blind forwards may harm the major community. So think twice before you speak but think thrice before you forward or share.

Final Funda: At my dispensing desk, I filled a prescription and handed over the drugs to a young boy. Before I could tell him anything about the dosage schedule, he read the drug name on blister and pressed the home button of his mobile phone and said, "Ok Google, tell me what are the side effects of cefixime tablets?"