Doctors untrustworthy of the web

Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 at 8:11am in Media, PR General  | 

PR Week is reporting (subscription required) that doctors don’t trust the information provided to them on pharmaceutical companies websites about their own products. The article says, “The research, commissioned by online medical resource OnMedica, found that only 27% of doctors trusted the information provided on official pharma company websites.”

Healthcare is an industry where the provision of correct information is paramount for obvious reasons. The web has changed things, however, and consumers are increasingly using the it to (rather dangerously) self-diagnose themselves. This scenario’s a little different and begs the question: why are over three quarters of doctors untrustworthy of information presented on an official website and, if this really the case, when do they trust the information presented to them?

Is it because doctors are technophobes who don’t trust any information presented to them on the web in general? Or is much deeper than that and is it a case of doctors not trusting information by pharma companies no matter which information delivery platform is used?

It’s rather worrying that there’s such a lack of mistrust between these two parties. What are the reasons behind it? I’m no healthcare PR expert; I know very little about the topic to be honest, but maybe the industry should be working on rebuilding this trust between themselves and their publics.

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