Maybe LGND does need a web page. The could have an entire section on indications for their pipeline:
November 19, 1997
Doctors Face Newly Knowledgeable
Patients
As Consumers Learn on the Net
By SANDEEP JUNNARKAR
ith the help of the Internet, Mallory Marshall feels she may have
saved her husband's life.
When her husband, Peter
Haffenreffer, was recently
diagnosed with prostate cancer,
she logged onto the World Wide
Web and quickly learned how to
search for medical papers and
new research, and personal sites
where people relate their own
experiences with their illness.
"We became very
well-informed," Marshall said.
"With the information I dug up,
we went all over the place to
interview different doctors and
compared different therapies
ranging from radiation, diet,
surgery and 'seed' implants."
Marshall is not alone in turning to the Internet for medical information.
The Net is playing an increasingly greater role as more patients log on to
help them make health care and treatment decisions, with some
physicians even beginning to prescribe specific Web sites.
"If a patient is interested in all the details of an illness, we refer them to
sites on the Web," said Robert Sikorski, a doctor at the National Cancer
Institute. Sikorski helped create MedsiteNavigator, a search engine
devoted to medicine and science. "It's the best way for them to get basic
information at their own pace."
For example, at the American Heart Association
site, patients can find a Heart and Stroke A-Z
Guide, which provides easy to understand
information on a topics that include arrhythmia
and low-cholesterol diets. The American
Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology
site provides useful information, including how to
discover common food allergies, and
precautions asthmatics can take for different
weather conditions. And the National Cancer
Institute has pages devoted to different illnesses,
including prostate cancer.
"The reason these sites are important is that they
enable patients to be informed consumers of
their physicians recommendations," said David
Blumenthal, a physician at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston and an associate
professor at Harvard Medical School. "The
information can help them to ask the right
questions and to access whether the physician is
competent to care for them."
In the latest issue of The Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA), released on
Tuesday, Blumenthal addresses the issue of
patients' gaining medical knowledge from the
Internet. While he says that the technology will
fundamentally alter health care in the future, he
also warns of side-effects.
Blumenthal said he was concerned with how
medical services will evolve as two classes of
patients are created: the computer literate and
the information disabled. His article examines the
evolution of this two-tiered health care system.
One level of care will be aimed at the informed
consumer, providing care sensitive to the
patient's desires. The other system, he says, will
have physicians and providers that are less
nimble and more paternalistic toward patients.
Most people, however, agree that the Net will
benefit both patients and physicians.
Haffenreffer and Marshall said they based their health care decisions on
the discussions they had with their doctor and the knowledge they gained
from the Internet.
"We could not have gone down this road without this resource," Marshall
said. "It gave us a sense of personal power and integrity, left us feeling
educated and somewhat calm about the choices we made."
But as she and her husband found, not all physicians are pleased when
their patients start quoting medical references.
"It is a much less comfortable relationship for doctors because you have
to be smart all the time. Till now, we knew that the patient didn't know
what we know. That was the source of our ego," Blumenthal said. "Now,
many patient encounters are going to be instances where we are going to
have to apply our general intelligence to a set of information that we know
better in most cases but in some, the patient may know a little more than
us."
Until recently, it was only the patients who suffered from rare illnesses
who were likely to know more about their illnesses than a doctor because
of the years of research and dialogue with different specialists.
"You don't have to live with an illness for a long time to know a great deal
about it anymore. That's what the Internet has done," Blumenthal said.
"It's not that the information was not available, it was just a lot harder to
find and it took a lot more ingenuity and time."
Some physicians may not fear for their egos because of patients armed
with reams of research. What they fear in this age of cost-efficient
managed care is having to spend more time with patients who are asking
more questions and questioning more answers.
"Physicians are struggling more than patients in how to deal with Web
information," Sikorski said. "They are worried that they may end up
spending a lot more time educating patients who have access to a lot of
information without knowing what is credible and what is wrong."
To avoid misinformation, Sikorski recommends that patients stick to the
sites affiliated with medical schools, and university and government
research institutes. A good reputable starting point is the U.S.
Government's Healthfinder site. Healthfinder collects links to high-quality
medical information on the Web.
Marshall, who returned home after her husband's treatment at Johns
Hopkins' Brady Urological Institute on Saturday said: "The positive effect
this will have on the medical community ultimately is that the people who
use the Internet to become educated about their own illness are going to
be able to make better use of their doctor's time and doctors are going
have to learn how to fully address their patient's concerns and questions
again."
Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites
are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control
over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these
sites, you will be ableto return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's
"Back" button or icon until thispage reappears.
MedsiteNavigator
American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. The site
has a glossary to help sift through all the medical jargon.
Prostate cancer pages at the National Cancer Institute
Journal of the American Medical Association
David Blumenthal 's article
U.S. Government's Healthfinder
Johns Hopkins' Brady Urological Institute
Sandeep Junnarkar at sandeep@nytimes.com welcomes your
comments and suggestions. |
