As doctors and health care officials get busier and the average doctor visit shrinks to about 15 minutes, people are using the Internet to gather information on health care.According to a recent report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 52 million adults, or 55 percent of Internet-using Americans, said they have turned to the Internet for medical information. The organization is a nonprofit, non-partisan group that explores the impact of the Internet and how it affects Americans overall, according to its Web site,

“http://www.pewinternet.org”>www.pewinternet.”We expect the number of users getting health-care information on the Internet to rise in the next few years because only half of Americans are on the Internet, and that number is growing,” said John Horrigan, senior researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “As both new and old users need more health-care information and have busier lives, they will turn to the Internet for quick, reliable information to aid their health care decisions.”

In a recent survey conducted by ISU Student Health, 46 percent of ISU students said they use the Internet for health-care information.”Our guess is that as students become familiar with the Internet, they will turn to it to get more information for their health needs,” said Lauri Dusselier, Supervisor of Prevention and Outreach at the Student Health Center.Half of the respondents in the national survey who have used online resources to get health-care information said it has improved the way they take care of themselves, and that it has directly affected their decision on how to treat illnesses and deal with their doctors, according to the Pew report. Only 9 percent of the users have exchanged direct e-mail with doctors, purchased medicine or vitamins or consulted online doctors. Anonymity of the Web is an advantage of online health care to 80 percent of the survey respondents, according to the random nationwide survey. The same amount of those surveyed reported that they learned something new in their search, while 92 percent said their last online search was useful.