HEALTHCARE PUBLISHING: a model for other markets

Introduction

This report treats the healthcare information marketplace as a case study to examine what users want or need from electronic information services, and how publishers are trying to address these issues. The report goes on to investigate how other marketplaces could benefit from analysing and integrating these user challenges.

The report was created by interviewing both publishers and users of digitally-delivered healthcare information. Publishers interviewed included:

• Thomson (Physicians? Desk Reference and mobilePDR);

• McGraw-Hill (Harrison?s Online and Harrison?s On Hand);

• Pharmaceutical Press (Stockley?s Drug Interactions ONLINE, Herbal Medicines ONLINE, Pharmaceutical Excipients ONLINE, and Martindale ONLINE).

Users included Dr. Muir Gray, the Director of the NHS National Electronic Library for Health, as well as a group of respondents to a BMJ.com article concerning the BMJ?s decision to charge for access to content from 2005.

Who uses healthcare information products?

Healthcare information providers are not targeting a homogeneous audience

• These groups will often use the same products but for different reasons, or for similar reasons but at different levels

• Translating these needs from publishing print products to building online and other electronic services is a significant challenge

User needs

Talking to users in this marketplace enabled the creation of the following listing of user needs:

• Choice: Users demand access to information from a variety of sources. Brand is also very important; print brands have been carried into electronic environments, and many electronic-only offerings have now become well-established

• Currency of information: This took a variety of forms, from research articles to up-to-date drug information

• Niche information: Users demonstrated a need to keep up-to-speed with general activities in the marketplace, allied with a need to remain on the cutting edge in a particular area of specialism

• Unbiased, quality information: Healthcare is an area in which relying on biased data could have severe consequences. Respondents however did appreciate that services may need to be supported by advertising or sponsorship

• Organisation and readability

• Integration into workflow: Many healthcare professionals are not desk-based, and need to access information in several locations, including on the ward, while travelling, and while at home

• Complementary print and electronic services: This ?mobility? amongst healthcare professionals in terms of accessing content in a variety of locations means that many appreciate being able to use both print and online resources to fulfil their information needs, and expect print and electronic products from the publishers to complement each other

• Free/low-cost information: In many healthcare markets budgets are tight, and online services were still often seen as providing free information

Publisher responses

The activities of the publishers interviewed for the report were analysed against this list of user needs, with the following results.

• Choice: All of the publisher services investigated for this report were fully searchable although none were effectively integrated into or connected to more portal-like facilities

• Currency of information: Services are updated regularly, often daily, but certainly with much greater frequency than their print counterparts

• Niche information: All of the services discussed provide valuable information resources, often in very specific niches

• Integration into workflow: Health professionals are developing more of a need to access content at the point of care, rather than in a desk-based office or library environment. Both mobilePDR and Harrison?s On Hand tackle this issue head on

• Compl