The past few weeks I have looked at specific examples of how the internet has played a role in the global health arena’s move toward the future. From Paypal to digital medical files, it seems like everything that we do is taking on new and more advanced ways for people to access it.
Donations are no longer dependent on seeking out physical people or mailing sums. Now there are buttons all over the internet that can collect money from you instantly. The internet’s ability to spread published and first-hand accounts of disease and other health issues rapidly also makes your everyday American more likely to be knowledgeable on a health crisis, and more likely to get involved by donating both time and money to a cause. This increased presence of the internet has also upped the stakes in public health disaster reporting - both by rallying entire nations at the drop of a hat, and also having the potential to create epidemic scares and other misinformation pitfalls. Even when looking at a more clinical example of internet’s emerging role in healthcare, there are pros and cons to be considered. The movement of health files from paper to electronic raises issues both of convenience and of privacy.
In all of these cases presented, the internet has shown the massive potential for increasing both awareness and involvement on all sorts of global public health issues. The main drawbacks have come up as issues with misinformation, global panics and privacy concerns. However, the sheer volume of people that can be reached through the growing internet makes it an incredibly attractive venue for global public health to move towards.
While the drawbacks are potentially unattractive, so far nothing disastrous has happened to severely curb the steady march toward globalization via the use of the internet. If anything, people are putting more and more trust in this system as the years go by - not much unlike previous internet activities, such as shopping, trading stocks and banking. If Americans can trust the internet to guard their savings, then the move to the internet will continue to grow and expand, reaching more people and tapping into more resources on a scale that was never thought possible before.
This post reminds me of this site called Everywun.com. You can basically go on and pick a cause that you want to support. The cause will be posted on your facebook wall. Since this counts as free advertisement, money is donated to support the cause that you pick. I’m not sure exactly how this works, or how effective this is. I feel like the boom in easy access to supporting global causes at the click of a button is definitely more convenient and attracts more people simply for its convenience. However, there is always the question of whether or not these people are making a big difference, or if their mouse-clicking is just generating more publicity and revenue for a private company.
Now that the world is becoming increasingly modernized with media technologies, the internet will be a vital tool moving forward for healthcare. I feel that even with websites like twitter and facebook, that type of technology has fundamentally changed the way that people interact with one another and has quickly become a crucial form of socializing and communication for people. If the healthcare community can create some type of similar network among itself or use existing technologies, there is a lot of potential for significant impact to be made. Even the simple act of digitizing medical records has made medical care significantly easier to implement, and I hope that going forward, more change can be made by using these technologies. Great post!
This is a topic I have also investigated in my blog. I have looked into ways of connecting people through the internet, especially concerning epidemic outbreaks. I have also found the vast power of information collaboration via the internet extremely captivating but I do think attempting to harness all this information effectively will not happen immediately. Both technology and culture (such as an individual’s trust in the internet, etc) have to advance immensely before all the global public health information available can be compiled. In my blog, I point out several small programs and are beginning to attempt this feat. Some examples are promedmail and healthwatch. You might want to check these out.
Finally, I must agree that the main concerns with making such a vast amount of health information available are “issues with misinformation, global panics and privacy concerns.” It would be interested to look into these more deeply. One particular questions is what new laws would be necessary to protect an individual’s rights if all health information is made public? I believe that this is just one of many important questions that needs to be asked.