Use of the Internet by Older People for Health-Related Issues: A Case Study of German Seniors

Today, people are increasingly informed about health-related issues and are taking on a participatory role in healthcare. The active search for information, facilitated in particular by the internet, through which individuals try to support their decisions about their own health, as well as the involvement in medical interaction from a decision-making position, have become common practice. In this trend towards informative, interpretive and deliberative models that currently mark the healthcare and the relationship between physician and patient, the older people constitute a particular age group, given that, on the one hand, they have their own pace of adaptation to the new ways of communication and information, and on the other hand, they grew up and lived a large part of their life in a culture where the doctor made all the critical decisions. This paper addresses the issue of the use of the internet for health-related problems by the seniors. The results of a case study of the older people in Germany, which involved a qualitative research based on in-depth semi-structured interviews, are presented and discussed. The main objectives and research questions that were pursued in the study aimed to identify the major aspects of the forms and content of the internet use by seniors for medical information and decisions, as well as to delimit the influences of this new way of information and communication, specific to the current trend in healthcare, on real medical communication, both with doctors and other patients, as well as on medical practice and experiences in general.