My colleague Melissa Davies published findings earlier this year on the role of the Internet in healthcare, which found that while doctors are still the primary source for healthcare information, the Internet is a close second. In this new era of collaborative care, patients have access to an array of online tools to arm them with more detailed information about their conditions and treatments than ever before. Specifically, social media vehicles are expanding and accelerating the pace at which patients and caregivers can gain access to drug treatment ratings. Similar to how an online shopper may peruse consumer reviews and ratings for, say, a flat screen TV on WalMart.com, today’s patients can get a similar quick fix.

A new crop of sites such as PatientsLikeMe.com and iGuard.org enable patients to quickly access a trove of treatment ratings based on the results of its online participants. Each site varies a bit (PatientsLikeMe.com is intensely personal, featuring user images and detailed personal accounts, whereas iGuard.org presents limited demographic data) but they are similar in their approach. PatientsLikeMe and iGuard both field surveys to capture patient treatment experiences, including dosing, length of treatment, side effects and efficacy. The results are tabulated and presented as an aggregate of all patient experiences. With just a few clicks, users can learn why a patient takes a prescription and why they’ve stopped taking it. Another site, DailyStrength.org, publishes “success” rates based on the efficacy of all users currently taking a medication.

By literally putting a human face on this vast repository of patient information and fostering social networking, these sites distinguish themselves from predecessors like DrugRatingz.com, and even established sites like WebMD.com, which also allows users to rate treatments. I was curious to see what traffic to the sites looked like. As yet, traffic is quite low and below our minimum reporting levels, but directionally this data seems to indicate that awareness of review sites is gradually increasing.

My instincts tell me that patients are not going to make a wholesale change and stop engaging in discussion forums, but they will incorporate a search or two on these sites as part of their information gathering. I expect that we’ll see discussion of these ratings pop up in the leading forums as well. At the end of the day, managing a disease or condition is not a simple task and no single site is going to be the silver bullet to allay all consumer questions and concerns.

But where does most of this time wasting occur?  At work, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported Tuesday, citing new research by Nielsen Online.

According to Nielsen, the greatest number of Internet videos are watched on weekdays between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. — when most people are at work.