• [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]80 percent of Internet users, or about 93 million Americans, have searched for a health-related topic online, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project[/inlinetweet].
• That’s up from 62 percent of Internet users who said they went online to research health topics in 2001, the Washington research firm found.
• [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Most frequently people went online to look up information about a specific disease or medical problem (63 percent) or a particular medical treatment or procedure (47 percent)[/inlinetweet].
• The new study indicates that looking for health or medical information is one of the most popular activities online.
• The research firm also found that more than half of people who had conducted a health-related search recently did it for someone else, either a spouse, child, friend or loved one.
• “A lot of people aren’t finding what they need,” says Fox. “That points to the need for better health literacy and search engines paying attention to health as (an in-depth) topic.”

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