Health marketing communications firm Enspektos did a deep dive into desktop and media habits and found that who you are in the healthcare industry determines how much you trust the information that pops up on the screen.
The overall trend was that doctors, nurses and pharmacists overwhelmingly trust information from health websites accessed from desktops more than information obtained via mobile and social network platforms, and they consider news from the Twitterverse to be the least credible. The study found that 78% of polled doctors trusted websites, compared with 69% of nurses and 71% of pharmacists, yet for all three professions, 85% of the polled individuals said they frequently tap the web for medical information.
Mobile content had credibility among 70% of the polled doctors, 46% of the nurses and 61% of the pharmacists, while health information on social networks was considered credible among 10% of the polled docs, 9% of the nurses and 6% of the pharmacists.
The relatively low fondness for social media, however, does not mean that pharma should continue to stay away from the communal space—the report found that these same healthcare providers changed their minds about the integrity of the social-media news flow if they dipped into the social space while doing work-related web surfing or just after scanning websites for related health information.
