Poster
# 4
Poster |
|
6th Internet World Congress for Biomedical Sciences |
J. W. Swanson(1), D. J. Capobianco(2), D. W. Dodick(3), J. Parker(4)
(1)(2)(3)Mayo Clinic - Rochester. United States
(4)Axia Health - Calgary. Canada
|
| ||
[Health Informatics] |
[Neurology] |
While accurate estimates of Internet use are difficult to uncover, all indications are that access to the Internet continues to undergo exponential growth. The number of those who routinely access the Internet has grown from under 100,000 in 1991 to over 200 million in 1999. Projected figures indicate global Internet access may approach 500 million users by 2005 (4). The table below summarizes current global Internet usage statistics:
Table 1. Global Internet Usage
| Region | Total Number of Users (M) | Percentage of Total Users |
| Africa | 1.7 | 0.8 |
| Asia/Pacific | 33.6 | 16.0 |
| Europe | 48.0 | 23.9 |
| Middle East | 1.0 | 0.5 |
| North America | 113.0 | 56.2 |
| Latin America | 5.3 | 2.6 |
| World Total | 202.6 | 100.0 |
The rate of increase of individual user Internet access is greatest outside the United States. The current ratio of United States Internet users to Internet users within other countries is approximately 2:1. By the end of 2000, this ratio is predicted to fall to 1:1.
Further, approximately 43% of global Internet users access the Internet using a language other than English with approximately 29% of such users accessing the Internet using one of many European languages while 15% of such users access the Internet using one of several Asian languages (5). The table below summarizes global Internet users by primary language of access:
Table 2. Percentage of Global Internet Users by Language of Access
| Language | Percentage of Global Internet Users |
| Japanese | 10.0 |
| German | 7.0 |
| Spanish | 6.0 |
| Chinese | 5.0 |
| French | 5.0 |
| Italian | 3.0 |
| Dutch | 2.5 |
| Portuguese | 2.0 |
| Swedish | 1.9 |
In addition to these demographic numbers, other statistics point to the exponential growth and sheer size of the Internet. For example, there are approximately 400 million web pages currently available on the Internet with the average number of new web pages that appear on the Internet on a daily basis ranging from 45,000 to 75,000.
Internet-based health information can be approximately quantified through submitting a variety of health-related search terms into one of the many ‘search engines’ prevalent on the Internet. Using one such engine, Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com), the table below summarizes the number of web pages currently posted on the Internet for a variety of health-related terms as of December 1999:
Table 3. Web Pages Currently Available for a Sampling of Health-Related Terms
| Health-Related Term | Number of Web Pages |
| "Health" | 13,000,000 |
| "Neurology" | 175,000 |
| "Cardiology" | 175,000 |
| "Dentistry" | 300,000 |
| "Asthma" | 330,000 |
| "Urology" | 85,000 |
| "Women’s Health" | 195,000 |
| "Continuing Medical Education" | 570,000 |
Finally, information technology (IT) spending in health care has been steadily increasing since 1993. In the United States, health care IT spending has increased from 7.5 billion dollars in 1993 to 13.6 billion dollars in 1997. Estimates of health care IT spending for 2000 shows an increase to 21 billion dollars.
Yet, these figures represent only 2.0% of total health care industry revenue, a figure significantly less than that spent in other industrial sectors which ranges from 3.0% to 7.0% in manufacturing and financial services industries, respectively. However, the health care industry is expected to increase percentage of total revenue IT spending faster than any other industrial sector over the coarse of the next five years to reach a total of 7% by 2005 (6).
|
|
| ||
|
[Health Informatics] |
[Neurology] |
