Medical text-based consultations on the Internet: a 4-year study

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Telemedicine
• Health Informatics

Background:

• The internet is a growing resource for health information and services.
• Online "Ask the doctor" services represent a significant digital health modality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To characterize the user demographics and usage patterns of a text-based online medical consultation service.
• To analyze inquiry volume, user characteristics, and temporal/geographic distribution of service use.

Main Methods:

• A descriptive analysis of four years of data from a Swedish "Ask the doctor" service.
• Evaluation of inquiry numbers, user age and gender, time of submission, medical query types, and geographic usage patterns.

Main Results:

• The service received 38,217 inquiries, with 75% from women, who were typically aged 21-60.
• Usage occurred 24/7, with nearly half of inquiries submitted during evenings and nights.
• Service use was geographically widespread but concentrated in more densely populated areas per capita.

Conclusions:

• Online text-based consultations with family physicians demonstrate broad geographic reach and gradual user growth over time.
• Usage trends indicate a particular increase among young and middle-aged women.
• Asynchronous, text-based medical consultations are predicted to grow in prevalence.