Friday, February 01, 2008

iCrossing Study Finds the Internet is Top Resource for Health Information

iCrossing Study Finds the Internet is Top Resource for Health Information

PR Newswire via NewsEdge Corporation :

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- iCrossing (http://www.icrossing.com/), a global digital marketing company, today announced the results of "How America Searches: Health & Wellness," the latest in an ongoing series of studies commissioned by iCrossing to quantify how people search for and find information online. The report provides insights into the habits of online U.S. adults seeking information about health topics.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051130/NYW105LOGO )

The study finds that the Internet beats doctors as the most popular resource for healthcare information, but healthcare professionals still hold the upper hand in retaining consumers' trust when addressing health-related issues and questions. The study also finds that one-third of online health searchers use social media resources, and that search engines dominate as the starting point for health care searches. The complete report, as well as past HAS studies, can be found at http://www.icrossing.com/research.

    KEY FINDINGS     * Internet is the most widely used resource for health information: 59% of       adults use online resources to obtain health and wellness information.       55% go to their doctors and 29% talk to relatives, friends or co-       workers.      * Doctors retain patients' trust: Not surprisingly, more than three-       quarters of consumers named health care professionals (primary care       physicians, specialists, nurses, and pharmacists) as their most trusted       health resource.  Internet resources, however, are considered by       respondents more trustworthy than friends/coworkers, pharmaceutical       companies and television.      * Social media an important health resource: 34% of health searchers use       social media resources to delve into health-related topics, with       Wikipedia, and online forums and message boards the most important       individual tools.  Social media holds a particular appeal for 18-to-34       year old health searchers, while overall, men appear more likely than       women to use online social media to research health and wellness issues.      * General search engines dominate: Two-thirds of online adults have used       general search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask) to find       health-related information, making them the default gateway for this as       well as many other topics; usage of health-specific search engines --       such as Healia, Medstory, Fealth, Kosmix and Healthline -- is minimal by       comparison.  

IMPLICATIONS

The results of "How America Searches: Health & Wellness" suggest that online resources, particularly general search engines, healthcare portals and a range of social media, play a central role is steering consumers towards care and treatment options. To take full advantage of opportunities to connect with in-market health consumers, content must be available in and optimized for a range of formats, and ideally should comprise a truly interactive component that allows consumers to socialize. In order to maximize relevancy, content should be oriented around the health topics that most preoccupy consumers, such as symptoms, treatment, conditions and wellness issues including exercise, nutrition and weight loss.

Methodology

This report presents the findings of a survey conducted among a sample of 1,084 adults comprising 513 men and 571 women 18 years of age and older. The online omnibus study was conducted twice a week among a demographically representative U.S. sample of 1,000 adults 18 years of age and older using the Greenfield Online panel. Interviewing for this survey was completed on December 3-4, 2007. The raw data was weighted by a custom designed program. Each respondent was assigned a single weight derived from the relationship between the actual proportion of the population based on U.S. Census data with its specific combination of age, sex, geographic characteristics and race and the proportion in the sample. Tabular results show both weighted and unweighted bases. Because the sample is based on those who initially self- selected for participation, no estimates of sampling error can be calculated. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to multiple sources of error, including, but not limited to sampling error, coverage error, error associated with non-response, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.

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EveryDay Health top-gaining Web property of 2007

EveryDay Health top-gaining Web property of 2007

Everyday Health topped comScore's list of the top-gaining Web properties of 2007. According to the data, Everyday Health was the No. 1 gaining property by percentage change in unique visitors, jumping from 2.69 million visitors in December 2006 to 12.07 million in December 2007. The site's 349% gain was driven by its acquisition of Drugs.com and other sites, said comScore. Also showing big growth in 2007 were Glam Media, which grew 213%, and iVillage.com, which gained 27%. Click the link below to read more.

Link to Comscore press release.
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New microsite educates men about common cause of ED

New microsite educates men about common cause of ED

Cook Medical has launched www.MensHealthPD.com, an educational microsite about Peyronie's disease, a form of erectile dysfunction (ED) that affects more than 1.4 million men in the United States. MensHealthPD.com includes videos of healthcare experts answering the most commonly asked questions about Peyronie's disease, a searchable physician finder tied to the American Urological Association, and a Q&A forum where patients and physicians can discuss Peyronie's treatments and coping with the disease. The site also includes information about the signs, symptoms, and progression of Peyronie's disease and a list of questions to ask a doctor. According to Cook Medical, a recent study showed that more than half of primary care physicians were unsure whether any effective treatments for Peyronie's disease existed. Cook Medical makes a repair graft for Peyronie's disease, according to its Web site.

 
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Boomers feel young but are neglecting age-related health issues

Boomers feel young but are neglecting age-related health issues

Although baby boomers feel younger than their age, they may be overlooking age-related health issues. Energizer Holdings (yes, the battery company) conducted a survey of baby boomers and found that 64% feel younger than their chronological age, and 55% feel healthier than their parents did when they were the same age. Although 57% reported that they eat healthy, and 41% regularly exercise, 46% have never had their hearing checked despite the fact that 33.3% said they think that they might have hearing loss. Also, the National Center for Health Statistics shows that half of Americans aged 55–64 have high blood pressure, and two out of five are obese.

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WonderHowTo.com Launches Web's Biggest How-To Video Site...

WonderHowTo.com Launches Web's Biggest How-To Video Site

Business Wire via NewsEdge Corporation :

Business Editors/Internet Writers

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--January 30, 2008--www.WonderHowTo.com, the video guide for a curious world, has unveiled the world’ s biggest free how-to video index, cataloging and linking to more than 90,000 curated video clips at launch. The company has also closed a Series “A” investment led by General Catalyst Partners and ad sales will be powered by Scripps Networks. The announcements were made today by Stephen Chao, co-founder and CEO, WonderHowTo. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

“At WonderHowTo.com, our passion is to search, curate and organize the fascinating but fragmented category of free and informative video that has recently become widely available on the web,” said Chao. “There is a quiet yet thrilling revolution happening in the how-to video world. Historically, people have spent around a billion dollars a year in the U.S. buying instructional videos about fitness, self-help, dancing, languages, auto repair, gardening and all kinds of other things. But the market forces of the internet are swiftly liberating the realm of video just as they liberated text a few years ago. As our community grows, WonderHowTo will become the free video guide for a curious world.”

WonderHowTo.com’ s team of pre-launch video curators has amassed an impressive collection of free, high-quality how-to video features from the farthest reaches of the Internet, classifying and ranking more than 90,000 videos in more than 400 categories over the last few months. With today’ s public launch, WonderHowTo.com will also begin accepting community submissions of new videos and soliciting user ratings of videos featured on the site.

During his successful career as a television executive, Chao left an imprint on the primetime landscape that persists today. As a young programmer at Fox, he commissioned Cops, created America’ s Most Wanted, and earned a reputation for creating commercial success by pushing boundaries and questioning conventional wisdom. Chao rose to president of Fox Television, and later held the same position at USA Cable where he launched Monk.

“WonderHowTo’ s content and community-centric approach to the web how-to video sector makes it a very attractive investment for us,” said George Bell, special venture partner, General Catalyst Partners. “Add to that the opportunity to work with Stephen, one of the great explorers in the media business, and it’ s easy to see why we became enamored with this company.”

WonderHowTo.com aggregates community-submitted links and reviews of how-to video from across the Internet. From mainstream queries such as how to tie a tie, to the eye-opening presentation of how to perform a Balducci levitation, to the long-tail eccentricity of how to train your cat to use the toilet, WonderHowTo embraces the ever expanding visual imagination of the collective web to provide the most comprehensive and revelatory results in the instructional video space.

Ad sales for the site are managed by Scripps Networks. Because videos on WonderHowTo are organized into extremely targeted categories, the site offers outstanding opportunities for contextually relevant advertising placements. On the content side, Scripps Networks has provided WonderHowTo with thousands of video assets from its library.

"Scripps Networks is already a leading web content publisher in this space and WonderHowTo dovetails perfectly with our distribution strategy of continuing to make our videos even more widely and easily accessible to do-it-yourself enthusiasts," said Doug Hurst, senior vice president and general manager of non-linear distribution for Scripps Networks. "We felt right away that WonderHowTo’ s vision of community-powered universal search for online instructional video would be a good fit for us and have been working together since April 2007 to index thousands of the best video clips from our networks - HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network and Fine Living - at WonderHowTo."

"With more than 400 categories of how-to video and continually expanding coverage of the long-tail curiosities of the web, WonderHowTo offers marketers a tremendously flexible ad targeting framework," said Jeff Meyer, senior vice president of interactive ad sales for Scripps Networks. "We are excited to add this site to the multi-dimensional solutions that the Scripps Networks Ad Sales team presents to advertisers. Marketers realize that those actively seeking how-to content are also actively seeking purchasing advice and information."

Kip Kay, the all-time top video publisher and earner on short-form online video site Metacafe said, “It was easy to submit my library of instructional videos to WonderHowTo, and the site does a great job of organizing and spotlighting my material. Every video view on WonderHowTo registers directly on my Metacafe channel, which results in more money in my pocket. I am excited to see such an outstanding community-powered search tool begin to centralize the how-to video search experience.”

By pointing to how-to video around the web, rather than hosting the videos, the ad-supported site sidesteps the cost structure issues that face many other online video communities. In addition, the company’ s approach enhances the monetization strategies deployed by pioneering content owners by increasing traffic and video views for publishers. WonderHowTo’ s dynamic user feedback and continuous web spidering keep the site’ s video index current by organizing new material and suspending any expired, broken, or otherwise misleading links.

In head-to-head tests, WonderHowTo’ s human-powered indexing and ranking mechanism consistently provides how-to video search results of significantly better quality and accuracy than existing general purpose web search engines.

Analysis of available data suggests that U.S. special interest instructional videos approach $1 billion in retail and direct-to-consumer sales annually. Additionally, the tremendous growth of special interest cable networks and the larger do-it-yourself movement suggest a very robust marketplace for informational content. Meanwhile, in the web search arena, Hitwise.com, the online competitive intelligence service, reported recently that “how-to” queries on the web have risen nearly 20% since the start of 2007, confirming that the consumer appetite for how-to knowledge continues to spill over from traditional media to the web.

About WonderHowTo.com

WonderHowTo.com is the video guide for a curious world. The privately-held company was founded in 2007 by Stephen Chao and Mike Goedecke, and is backed by Cambridge, MA-based General Catalyst Partners. Chao is a media industry veteran, and Goedecke is the founder of Belief, an award-winning broadcast design firm. WonderHowTo.com is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA. For more information, visit www.wonderhowto.com.

About General Catalyst Partners

General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building the technology-based companies that will lead innovation and transform industries. Founded in 2000, General Catalyst Partners leverages its principals' extensive operational, business development and technological expertise to provide portfolio companies with a catalyst for success through business-building and partnership development assistance. General Catalyst has approximately $1 billion under management and is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. For more information, visit www.generalcatalyst.com.

REMICADE EXAMPLE:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/diet-health/prescription-drugs-pharamceuticals-video/how-to-find-relief-for-psoriasis-5301/

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Manhattan Research service goes beyond consumer online numbers

Manhattan Research service goes beyond consumer online numbers

Analysis of online pharma resources, company and product Web sites, search engine use, and social networking are some of the topics covered in Manhattan Research's latest research and advisory service, ePharma Consumer. The online study of U.S. consumers, available now for subscribing clients, includes more than five years worth of trended data and insight from Manhattan Research. Other topics include DTC advertising, utilization and trust of online prescription information, blogs, podcasts, and wikis. "The study ePharma Consumer was built as a result of numerous conversations with our largest clients who wanted to go above and beyond typical server and media usage data," said Mark Bard, president of Manhattan Research. Rather than asking whether sites are being used, Bard said pharma companies now want to know what kinds of consumers are using their sites, how they use them, and what they do when they leave.

Learn more about ePharma Consumer by clicking below:

http://www.manhattanresearch.com/products/Strategic_Advisory/ePC/

 
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Interactive site gives users personalized info about their bone health

Interactive site gives users personalized info about their bone health

A new interactive Web tool aims to help people assess their bone health and learn about osteoporosis. The tool, Check Up On Your Bones, is from the National Institutes of Health Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases ~ National Resource Center.
 
By completing a five-minute personal profile, users can receive individualized information about their risk factors for osteoporosis and information about how to protect their bones. The tool also generates personalized steps people can take to keep their bones healthy and prevent osteoporosis, a summary sheet to share with the doctor, and a list of tailored Web resources.
 
The personal profile collects information about gender and age; family history of osteoporosis and broken bones; lifestyle habits, including diet and exercise; and other medical conditions and medications. Click below to see the tool:
 
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