InSites Blog

A few days ago I read an interesting article about medical search engines on The Next Web Blog:

Last February, Google launched an online tool for patients called Google Health. You can store and manage all your medical information on this site.

Several start-ups profit from this move by Google. Like San-Francisco based MEDgle, a site where you can search through 10,000 symptoms and more than 2000 diagnoses. Just click the body part that’s bothering you and start browsing away to find a solution. MEDgle founder Ash Damle explains how Google Health helps them: “Google Health is a good opportunity for us. MEDgle was designed to be able to run on top of medical health records. Google Health now provides a platform for this. They have the data, we can make it actionable and relevant to the user.”

So the self-funded start-ups basically puts an accessible layer over the Google Health data. Users select the body part and the symptom, and then specify their gender and age. After hitting the search button, a page with a short description about the symptom and external links appear. A nice touch to this page is that users can rate those external links.

It reminded me of some striking results of our recent pan-European Health Care study:

26% (fully) agrees with ‘when I feel something I first look on the Internet to see what might be the cause’

24% (fully) agrees with ‘before I go to a doctor, I first look for more information on the Internet’

50% (fully) agrees with ‘when my doctor makes a diagnosis, I often look on the Internet for extra information’

27% (fully) agrees with ‘when my doctor makes a diagnosis, I will check it based on online information’

26% (fully) agrees with ‘when I need to take medicine, I first look up more information on the Internet about this medicine’

So, the physician remains by far the most reliable source of health related information. But the patient has entered the dialogue and the Internet is the global patient knowledge bank. With the aid of ‘Doctor Google’ patients ‘play’ doctor online, preparing their diagnosis – even looking for specific treatments – and critically verifying the doctor’s diagnosis & prescriptions. Therefore, specialized sites on certain syndromes & medical portal sites acquire high trust levels.

Moreover, 1 in 2 consumers discusses the health related information they find online with others, 1 in 3 forwards it to others. The health information sourced online is also discussed with the GP. 16% makes a doctor’s appointment after their preparatory internet search, 38% discusses the information they found with their physician (18% advises others to do so) and 14% even ask for a specific medication or treatment to be prescribed to them.

Magali Geens, our Pharmaceutical Research Director, puts the phenomenon into context:

‘The internet should not necessarily be considered a threat for the patient-physician relationship. The patient clearly wants to involve the professional in their internet searches. However, it can put stress on a physician, who is suddenly challenged to explain more about certain products (that maybe are controversial, still under development, not known by the physician…) and syndromes. The internet in a way empowers modern patients to enter the dialog and not all physicians are used to this, open to this, have the time for it… However, the rapidly growing success of certain platforms such as ‘patientslikeme.com’ and ‘rateMDs.com’ cannot be neglected by the present-day medical force. They also have an educational role to play, guiding patients towards trustworthy sources, helping them to interpret things in the right way.’

(*) Source: Pan-European Health Study / InSites Consulting / © 2008 / 7 EU countries, i.e. UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands & Belgium / total sample of 2.100 respondents / representative for total country populations

7 out of 10 supermarket shoppers want to receive targeted promotions. The majority of shoppers (61%) say that they often receive supermarket promotions that are not of interest to them. Shoppers are open to innovations in their supermarket: coupons linked to their loyalty card, intelligent shopping carts telling you which products you need based on a shopping list and the total budget of your purchases, shopping carts that automatically register purchases at the checkout, or products in the fridge that warn you when their expiry date is close. While these applications make shoppers buy more, they are not ready to pay more for them. They still want to keep social contact in their supermarket. This was revealed by a survey conducted by InSites Consulting in collaboration with Living Tomorrow. Click here to read the full press release  or for more information about this study, contact Annelies Verhaeghe, R&D Consultant (Annelies@insites.eu).

On 27 August, Erwin Knuyt, Consulting Director, is the key note speaker at the global sales meeting of the Imaging Group of Agfa Healthcare. Agfa Healthcare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a leading provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow, diagnostic image management solutions, state-of-the-art systems for capturing and processing images in hospitals and healthcare facilities. The key messages of his speech will be: ‘understand what your customers want’, ‘align the organization to deliver the basics’ and ‘build on the strong relationship you have with the customer’. Want to learn more about these topics or get in touch with Erwin, e-mail (erwin@insites.eu) or call him (+32(0)9 269 15 12).

Smartees are a new smart food for clever researchers and marketeers. They’re a series of free half-day workshops about learning and sharing knowledge. Each session covers a different topic, giving you new ideas and practical techniques for better marketing by InSites Consulting experts. Topic for the first Smartees is Taking advertising research forward, hunting gorilla’s” on 23 september 2008 by Steven Van Belleghem, Director Brand & Communication Research. Want to read more about the full program or sign in for a free invitation, visit the Smartees website: http://smartees.insites.eu

Since 1 August InSites Consulting is the Netherlands’ latest new market research player.
InSites Consulting was established in 1997 as a spin-off of the Vlerick business school (www.vlerick.com) and has grown into an online market research company with a strong international focus. InSites Consulting’s roots are Belgian but 75% of its turnover is generated outside Belgium.
Today the company employs 75 people and will generate an estimated turnover of 12 million euro in 2008. Already 20% of InSites Consulting’s current client portfolio is established in the Netherlands. Big clients include Heineken, Sara Lee, Heinz, ING…

Kristof De Wulf, Managing Partner of InSites Consulting: “The opening of a local site in Rotterdam was one of our growth objectives for the following years. The choice for the Netherlands was obvious: online market research is generally accepted, we already have a great many Dutch clients, an online panel in excess of 170,000 Dutch people at our disposal and have noticed that increasingly more companies are organising themselves from a Benelux perspective. The main reason is of course that we can provide an even better service to our Dutch customers.”

The question remains whether the fiercely contested Dutch market can handle an extra player. Ramon Pardo, country manager for the Netherlands and ex-RI employee with more than 16 years experience in the sector has no doubts: “Of course the Netherlands has many good companies which have secured a strong position. I still see many possibilities for InSites Consulting to become an established value on the Dutch market. ‘Taking research forward’ is our base line, and it stands for a progressive focus on innovation and R&D, with great freedom for initiative and self-development. Moreover the academic roots of the organisation provide an important network that is actively used in this. In this way InSites Consulting is funding a PhD student of the University of Maastricht for the next 4 years to come up with innovative views together with us which can be translated into relevant solutions for our clients.”

In any case InSites Consulting is well integrated in the world-wide ESOMAR network: over the past 2 years the company has presented as many as 8 different papers at various conferences, 2 of which were nominated for best paper, and organised worldwide workshops about web 2.0 applications in market research. “Internally, we call it ‘connected research’. It allows us to bring our clients closer to their customers via various new techniques and methods such as online communities, bulletin boards, blogs, online qualitative research, etc.”, adds Kristof De Wulf.

InSites Consulting moved into the Rotterdam Brainpark on 1 August. For more information on InSites Consulting, please go to www.insites-consulting.nl.