Web-based health education in medicine and surgery

The Internet is transforming health care and has the potential to combine existing health information sources. The general public increasingly uses the Internet as a complementary resource for health information. With the rapid development of the Internet and broadband worldwide, the web has become a major means of health information dissemination and proactive use of the Internet for health promotion is possible. Health professionals need to be more responsive to the use of the Internet to deliver better healthcare for consumers. In this editorial comment, I tried to address the issue and even explore the navigational needs of consumers for finding online health information and identifying consumer barriers to online health information-seeking behavior.