It’s no secret that the British are royally PO-ed about their ailing public health system. Understaffed and underfunded, hospitals are unable to respond to demand. Media accuses clinical beds of breeding superbugs. Patients criticise doctors for hit and run diagnoses that fail to satisfy. Treatments are increasingly compared online as being inconsistent and worse, ineffective.
Not surprisingly, political Buzz has turned to public health. How to create and condition a more healthy, happy population? Politicians do the usual teetering between sympathising with and “constructively criticising” their health care constituents. But really, it’s the Buzz online that is connecting the health care consumer.
Parents trade local treatment regimens and the different Brand names of generic antibiotics. Patients compare doctors and prescriptions. (We may not be that far from a rate-a-doc, like the rate-a-prof created by US university students). Patients of chronic conditions are given the de facto status of experts in experience online, and they dispense support and advice with more speed (and more consideration, according to their networks) than the educated, expensive experts that haven’t got the time to listen.
What the patients say, why they say it, and to whom promises to radically alter the business of medicine. Pharmaceuticals, health officials, and local and national health care policies are all being actively reviewed online. Already, patients can order medication from online pharmacies in different countries. What they buy, where they buy it, and what they think about both choices makes for an interesting study already underway at Attentio.