The Go-Betweens: Health, Technology and Info(r)mediation

Abstract

Welcome or not, most people in Western countries are unable to get through a day without receiving a dose of health information. It is available from, passed through or pushed at health help seekers by health care professionals, alternative health care practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, employers, co-workers, friends, family members, vendors of health products and through government-sponsored health promotion campaigns. It is delivered through a variety of media, including self-help books, magazines, leaflets, television and radio advertising and programming and, increasingly, the internet. If the volume of health information present in the public domain in previous decades could be described as a mountain, the current situation might better be described as an avalanche. Recipes or directives about practices for healthy living, as well as information about medical conditions and treatments, prescription drugs and alternative health products and therapies, are everywhere. Against this dense backdrop of advice is the increasingly prevalent notion in public health policy that people, whether as patients, care providers, citizens or, increasingly, consumers, have an obligation to keep themselves informed about health matters.