Online Usage Trends in New Markets: Physicians, Seniors, Children & Teens

Physicians Increase Use Of The Internet

A recent study commissioned by Healthcare Research Partners found that doctors are using the Internet more often and concludes that this trend will change the way in which physicians communicate with their colleagues and patients in the future.

The first part of the study surveyed 1,103 randomly selected primary care physicians in eleven North American, European, and Asian countries.

It found that 80 percent of physicians own a computer and 44 percent of them have accessed the Internet at some time, most often from the home, not the office. Of those who had not made use of the Internet, two-thirds intended to do so soon; more than 80 percent of physicians are therefore online or intend to be online in the near future.

The second phase of the study was conducted with over 2,500 Internet-connected physicians in 105 countries.

Excluding all time spent on e-mail, these doctors reported spending half of their Internet time seeking medical information. Almost all, 95 percent, said they use the Internet to access disease information, 88 percent reported reading medical journals online, and 86 percent said they use the Internet to obtain drug information.

The New England Journal of Medicine was reported to be accessed most frequently on-line by these Internet-connected physicians. It attracted 33 percent of physicians. The Lancet and British Medical Journal were each accessed by 23 percent, and Journal of the American Medical Association by 19 percent of physicians.

Academic and independent scientific sources are not the only sites accessed. Sixty-three percent of the Internet-connected physicians reported having visited the Web site of at least one pharmaceutical company. When visiting pharmaceutical sites, physicians stated they most wanted to see "product information," (cited by 51 percent), "R&D information,"(27 percent) and "disease information,"(16 percent).

Furthermore the research found that doctors were encouraging patients to seek medical information on the Internet. As many as 62 percent of Internet-connected physicians reported suggesting to some of their patients that they, the patients, could obtain medical information via the Internet and almost one-third of physicians reported that patients had brought to them medical or health-related information they had found on the Internet.

These findings strongly suggest that physicians may soon be obtaining online a significant portion of the information they utilize to practice medicine and that as patients become ever-better informed, the demands placed upon physicians to stay abreast of medical news will grow.

(Contact: Marie Manadilli, PSL Research, +514-938-2606 e-mail mariem@pslgroup.com)

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Seniors Getting Digitally Savvy

A survey of 1,040 adults over 50 who visited the SeniorNet Internet site between June 15 and Aug. 15 shows a high percentage use their PCs to manipulate digital images. The survey was conducted by Adobe Systems, Inc. [NYSE:ADBE] and SeniorNet to see if that age group is interested in photo imaging.

SeniorNet runs 140 centers in 35 US states that train older adults who want to use or learn about computer-based technology.

The survey sought to find out how often older adults use PCs to scan, edit, manipulate and print digital or digitized photos. It also looked at whether they put the results into creative projects like greeting cards, calendars, posters, or just e-mail to the kids.

Adobe said 47 percent of the senior respondents use photo-editing software to put photographs onto a personal Internet page, while 13 percent, said they just want to "have fun with photos."

Eighty percent of the respondents own a color printer. Another 7 percent, say they plan to buy one soon. Forty-nine percent own a scanner, with 19 percent, planning to buy one soon.

Twelve percent, have a digital camera while 27 percent plan to buy one. This large number probably tracks with the closing gap between film- based and digital cameras in picture clarity. The gap in cost is still very wide.

The Adobe spokesperson quoted a recent Nielsen survey that said 79 million people in Canada and the US use the Internet. Of this number, 13 million, or almost 17 percent, are over 50 with one of the largest growing groups on the Internet is women over age 50.

SeniorNet is on the World Wide Web at http://www.seniornet.org, Adobe’s Web site is at http://www.adobe.com.

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More Teens, Children Going Online

While many teenagers talk about going to the mall to hang out, more and more are heading to cyberspace, a new study from eMarketer shows. The research firm said 9 million teenagers age 12 to 17 - almost half of all teens in the US - will regularly access the Internet by the end of 1998.

What’s more, teens in that age group will also account for 16.1 percent of the projected total US online population of 56 million by year’s end, eMarketer said. And the percentage of children aged 3 to 17 going online will increase three-fold by 2002, the company said. In numbers of people, kids aged 3 to 7 accessing the Net will increase from a projected 13 million by year-end 1998 to 38 million by the year 2002.

"As children at younger ages become more involved in and more comfortable with the Internet, the long-term potential for e-commerce grows exponentially," says eMarketer’s Geoff Ramsey. "Today, kids use the internet as a learning tool at school. That comfort level will lead to the future growth of other Internet applications in communications, commerce, shopping and entertainment."

When kids are online, they go to youth-oriented learning and entertainment Web sites including Nickelodeon, The New York Times Learning Network, PBS Kids and Babyboomer.com, eMarketer said.

eMarketer is on the Web at http://www.emarketer.com.

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