75 Years of India’s Independence: How Have Doctors Evolved Reading Medical and Scientific Content? A Cross-Sectional Survey to Decipher Unmet Needs, Opportunities and Future Directions

Abstract

Information is now a commodity that can be accessed, serviced, or traded with minimal effort and maximum ease. The Healthcare and Medical information news that keeps the provider and the receiver aware and updated about the diseases and its therapy is no different. However, that also comes with an issue of information overload for the humongous volumes of research in this field, coupled with increasing publications. As India celebrates its 75 years of Independence, we targeted to understand the evolution in the information access, consumption & utilization journey of the HCPs. A secondary research and pan India survey with 680 Healthcare professionals was conducted to uncover the trends and the evolution of healthcare information access over these years. MedShots figured as the top medical news aggregating platform, followed by MedScape. Educational/CME platforms are the preferred sources for gathering information and 64% of the respondents spent more than 10 minutes each day reading medical updates. 58.3% of respondents agreed that Digitalization and sharing of information through mobile applications is comfortable and 86.30% of survey respondents preferred content on Clinical practice guidelines and recommendations, with 57.1% also expecting such platforms to support clinical/therapeutic decision making. The results have reinforced the higher level of acceptance & adaptation in the HCPs towards digitalization of the information access. While the medical information/news aggregating platforms remain helpful in updating the knowledge of HCPs in clinical decision-making, the study provides future directions to make the experience of information access & consumption more integral to the knowledge journey of HCPs.