Hi Taran, This was a great summary of the issues associated with access to health care and the concerns that people will rely on self diagnosis because they either don't trust health care providers or don't have access to them. It's a complex issue and one you have laid out in great detail here. Thanks for your thought provoking summary, Siobhan
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Taran Rampersad Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2006 9:06 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] healthy people 2010 and the digital divide As a former shift supervisor for the Naval Hospital Orlando Emergency Department, I couldn't agree more with Errol, and Siobhan's points are not lost on me. There are people who go to school for years to be able to diagnose and treat diseases. Deriving information from a patient history, assuring that proper lab tests and radiology is done, and so on. It's not an easy job, and there's even an Oath associated with practicing medicine. Most of the time, when people are not willing to ask their doctor about something they are not willing to search for it on the internet... and if they are unwilling to see a doctor and would rather surf the internet for solutions, I suppose that they will at the least become informed patients (I'm a big fan of 'House'). If society doesn't want to see their doctors, that means a certain level of trust is gone. Of course, many doctors forget that only 100 years ago they might have been paid in chickens, but I digress... Medical information on the internet for health care providers is good. But is medical information on the internet good for the average person? Maybe. Do we want people getting their BLS (Basic Life Support) training off of the internet with no practical training? Maybe. A person can feel their own xiphoid process, perhaps even feel someone else's xiphoid process. That xiphoid process is pretty important for CPR to assure proper chest compressions, and even to avoid fracturing ribs. What about chest pain? Do we want people hopping on the internet when they feel an elephant standing on their chest, then trying a mixture of Milk of Magnesia and Viscous Xylocaine (the cardiac cocktail) at home in the hope that it will help when they may be in the early stages of what may become atrial or ventricular fibrillation? Probably not. We'd probably want them to go see their doctor. I would. However, knowing some things about medicine benefits everyone. For example, a baby aspirin a day is what is supposed to be good for your heart. The human genome project has presented that this only works on one out of every 30 or 300 (I forget the exact number of 0s involved) people - but I don't know if I am one of those people. But that baby aspirin a day (only a baby aspirin) can be good for people. So they should... talk to their doctor. Once the ending point of anything medical ends up at a doctor, I'm all for it. And then, 'Where There Is No Doctor' has been free online for quite some time now - BUT - in many parts of the world, including the U.S., it's not 'free' because they can't get online. So without internet access, even with all the information in the world about medical problems (and your treatment being determined by Google result order. LOL), people don't get the information. And if they can't afford internet access... can they afford a doctor? And that's really what I was getting at. There's always television. Someone remind me to 'talk to my doctor about Lunestra'. :-) Medicine is not just about information floating around there. Medicine is a *practice*. Medicine requires education, intelligence, experience, and sometimes great intestinal fortitude Some things should be on the internet, or more importantly, available to people (the internet is only one avenue). But we also need to make sure that people have medical care in the first place. I've been reading a book, 'The End of Poverty', and within it there is a picture of a clinic closed because the village could not afford the doctor and the supplies the doctor needed. Another city within the book is treating patients with HIV for $1 US/day, but the patient has to pay that $1 US and at the time of the writing of the book, only 400 people out of thousands could afford the treatment. It's unlikely that they could not afford the treatment because they wanted to make sure that they had internet access. So... yes, medical information online *can* be good, but I think getting medical care to people who need it is more important. I applaud the efforts of people for getting valuable and proper information online. I just want there to be trained people reading it to treat the people who need it, not some hacker (worse: who doesn't speak English natively) who can't tell the difference between acute nasopharyngitis, plasmodium falcoparum and an elevated T wave diagnosing and treating people because they read it on the Wikipedia. When last I was certified as a BLS-I, about a decade ago, the rules had changed for CPR such that one started CPR only AFTER 911 (emergency) had been called so that the symptoms can be treated until the cause of the symptoms can. It's not too different here. We need people getting treatment, or able to get treatment. ehewitt wrote: > We have to be so careful. Many times information is incorrect. A check > of health advice for gout patients or more so diabetics shows much > contradiction in the information available on the Internet. Exploring > without guidance/explanation can also be quite serious -- even fatal. > The Internet in many areas cannot be taken as is which is why we need > to use it to ensure that the guidance/discussion/explanation that most > people -- especially in regards to health issues, need is much more > readily available. As such, the Internet cannot be the be all and the > end all. A pain in the belly can be caused by many things -- including > one's diet. > Errol > > At 19:01 28/04/2006 -0500, you wrote: > >> >> I left Taran's question below. As a medical librarian, i would like >> to believe that an increase in a person's understanding about >> prevention and disease will help them to take better care of >> themselves and be a healthier person. And it will help them to know >> what to demand from health care providers. While it is true, that >> people of lower economic status have less access to high quality or >> to even adequate health care, it is also true that they have less >> access to reliable health information. More and more government >> agencies and nonprofits are relying on the Internet to be their >> vehicle to distribute the latest news in health research and >> preventative care. People without access to the Internet cannot get >> on resources that the National Institutes of Health, including the >> National Library of Medicine and its excellent web site MedlinePlus >> http://medlineplus.gov/ provide. Dealing with providing people >> Internet access to assist them in getting better access to health >> information is a very important step in assisting them in getting and >> demanding better access to health care. Information is Power - or at >> the very least, an important part of getting power. So, in fact, >> maybe someone would be prevented from getting malaria if they were >> able to get online and learn that they need to take specific >> preventative measures to avoid it, and then were able to demand that >> preventative care be provided. Thats a stretch, and there are MANY >> issues that surround health care. Since this is the digital divide >> network, i am only focusing on this one aspect of it. I hope you see >> the value of having this conversation on this list serv. >> >> thanks for your comments. >> siobhan >> >> > >> Wouldn't it be more fair to say that people who can afford internet >> access can also afford better health care (preventive and otherwise)? I >> find it difficult to see the correlation any other way. The digital >> divide encompasses many things, but I don't think that anyone has gotten >> malaria because they didn't have internet access. -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago [EMAIL PROTECTED] Looking for contracts/work! http://www.knowprose.com/node/9786 New!: http://www.OpenDepth.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/knowprose/ "Criticize by creating." - Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
