Online health info popular but often unchecked

The number of people looking for health information online is set to soar as workers return from holiday breaks, but few will check where the information comes from, according to an international survey.

A report by researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) commissioned by the private healthcare firm Bupa said that with smartphones and tablet computers set to outsell personal computers by 2012, more health information is available online and there are more ways to access it than ever before. The Bupa Health Pulse survey questioned more than 12,000 people in Australia, Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and the United States and found that 81 percent of those with internet access use it to search for advice about health, medicines or medical conditions. Russians search for health advice the most on the internet, followed by China, India, Mexico and Brazil. The French search for online health information the least, according to the survey's findings. It also found that 68 percent of those who have access have used the internet to look for information about specific medicines and nearly 4 in 10 use it to look for other patients' experiences of a condition.