Will Social Media Transform Medicine?

Patients are taking on the health care industry, via social networking. In what’s being called Health 2.0, people with chronic illnesses use the Web to list their symptoms, test experimental drugs, report side effects, and voluntarily share their medical information online.

The movement is more widespread than you’d think. A survey done in January of 2008 found that about six out of ten American adults have searched the Internet for health information, and about a third of those people went to social, interactive sites like patient blogs and message boards.

To find out more about this, we turn to Catherine Arnst, who covers medical news for Business Week. Catherine's article, "Can Patients Cure Health Care?” about how patients are using the Internet, is in the Dec. 15 issue of the magazine.

(Illustration by Nick Dewar)