title: Medical information asymmetry in the cyberworld of manuel castells.
abstract: Before 1997, the Internet was strongly associated with universities and higher education, including medical research. There were only small virtual communities at that time, but all their members had equal access to the entire body of information placed on the net. Each networking participant was able not only to retrieve but also to create and distribute medical information. This state was a symmetry, of sorts, between passive and active Internet usage. Since that time, however, significant commercialization of the Internet (including the medical domain) has been increasing its asymmetry. We currently observe a division into providers, serving and distributing medical information on the net, and consumers, who receive pre-prepared "products". This brings new challenges for both academic and practicing e-health physicians. First, while all large-scale initiatives to certify medical portals have so far failed, the public must be educated to chose valuable, high quality medical information themselves. Secondly, this imbalance favors abusive commercial behavior, such as spam, spreading viruses and advertising without content-related information. Stimulating a restoration of the previous idea of the Internet for non-profit activities seems to be best way to avoid the continuation of Internet "degeneration". Manuel Castells has defined future industrial and postindustrial progress of humanity as activity in global virtual communities, interchanging ideas, knowledge and information. The role of medical professionals seems to be to educate patients and their families on how to search for quality medical information and to stimulate other medical professionals, researchers as well as patients' supportive groups to be active themselves. Reducing the medical information asymmetry will provide a positive influence on the progress of e-health in the future. Open source software may help reduce costs by creating adequate resources.
authors.affiliation: Ludwik Rydygier Hospital Torun, Poland. Piotr.Kasztelowicz@am.torun.pl
authors.forename: Piotr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kasztelowicz
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services / Q000458:organization & administration; D020407:Internet; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care