Online search fuels healthcare decisions

Ryan Olohan, Google industry director for health care

Internet search activity, particularly on mobile devices, has become an important element of consumer healthcare decision-making.

Consumers are taking more ownership in their health than ever before, said Ryan Olohan, national industry director for health care at Google, during a presentation at the Health Innovation Summit, co-hosted by CVS Health in partnership with Drug Store News and Mack Elevation.



“They’ve got more information and data at their fingertips, and they are using the information to become more discerning, more educated and more demanding,” he said during his presentation in June. One-in-20 Google searches is related to healthcare information, and a large majority (86%) of consumers go online when experiencing new symptoms, Olohan said.



Consumers increasingly are unwilling to sit back and passively allow their doctors to make treatment decisions, he said. Nearly half (48%) of consumers said they wanted to partner with their doctors on treatment decisions in 2015, up from 44% in 2012 and 40% in 2008. “The trend is that consumers more and more want to have a two-way relationship with their doctor,” he said, noting that 84% of consumers conduct an online search following a doctor’s appointment.



As an example of the volume of research being conducted online, Olohan cited the activity around rheumatoid arthritis, which was the subject of 16 million Google searches in 2016, a more than 10% increase over the preceding year. An additional 230,000 searches took place on YouTube, where there are 135,000 videos related to rheumatoid arthritis and more than 1,500 related channels.



Healthcare-related search also is increasingly localized, especially for consumers who have immediate health needs. The number of searches containing the phrase “hospital near me,” “pharmacy near me,” “doctor near me,” “clinic near me” or “dentist near me” have been steadily increasing since they first began showing up on Google just a few years ago. “This is a new consumer behavior that up until 2013 never existed before,” Olohan said.



Localized searches also drive retail purchases, according to Google research. Three-in-4 people who conduct a local mobile search visit the store within 24 hours, and more than 25% of those searches result in a store purchase.



Time of day also is a factor in consumers’ online search behavior, Olohan said. For example, Google searches for the term “infant formula” peaked at around 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. every night in one recent week, according to Google Trends. Parents are looking for information about why their babies are waking up crying in the middle of the night, and that presents an opportunity for marketers to target solutions to these potential customers, he said.



Meanwhile, Google and its sister companies under the Alphabet umbrella are making significant advances in other areas of health care, as well. These include such disruptive technologies as contact lenses that contain a microchip that measures the glucose level in a diabetic patient’s tears, and a clinical-grade, wearable health sensor.