business
National Library of Medicine tops U.S. Google searches on drugs
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted March 28, 2011
A new study published in the March issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy looked at the sources of online drug information that are found when doing searches. It found the National Library of Medicine to be the first result in about 75% of the searches for brand and generic drug names originating from Google USA.
In contrast, Wikipedia was the first result for about 80% of the searches for generic drug names originating from Google Canada, Bing and Yahoo. On these sites, more than two-thirds of searches for brand-name drugs led to industry-sponsored sites.
The study found that patients most often search for drugs that have the potential for dependence, or drugs associated with stigmatized conditions, such as antidepressants, or that have received media attention (link).
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/03/28/bibf0328.htm.
