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Introduction
The internet holds a plethora of potentially useful information, including both human and pet health information. In Europe, the internet has been found to be an increasingly popular source of health information. 1 In the UK, daily or almost daily use of the internet was recently reported by 82 per cent of the adult population, alongside an increase in viewing online health information, which has been reported by 51 per cent of adults in 2016, up 33 per cent from 18 per cent in 2007. 2
Nicholas et al 3 conducted an online survey of 1322 individuals within Britain who used the internet and found that 97 per cent of those had used the internet to look up a specific condition or illness and 57 per cent had researched health information as a result of a doctor's visit. More recently, Moreland et al 4 conducted a survey in Scotland of 571 individuals before a medical appointment and found that 68.4 per cent of respondents had searched the internet for health information for either themselves or someone else. The two main avenues for online health information were search engines and the National Health Service website. This compares with only 2.8 per cent who reported using other specific websites. Ninety per cent of surveyed patients found the information useful and 67.1 per cent reported learning something new based on the information they found online. Furthermore, Moreland et al 4 found that only 34 per cent spoke to a healthcare professional about their online findings, and only 11.8 per cent stated that the online information influenced them to make a medical appointment.
There are a wide range of benefits associated with accessing health information through the internet, including speed, accessibility, anonymity and the vast amounts of information about almost every known medical health condition. 5 6 However, despite such benefits, there are also clear disadvantages to the use of the internet to ascertain health information, such as a wide variant of online sources in quality, accuracy and content, privacy concerns, and the potential for self-misdiagnosis. 6 For example, Moreland et al 4 found that 70.4 per cent of people surveyed reported concerns about the reliability of online sources and 67.1 per cent reported concerns about online...