INTRODUCTION In an age of personalized medicine, nothing represents the zeitgeist more than individual consumers using the Internet and World Wide Web to seek medical and health information. According to surveys by the Jupiter organization and Harris Interactive, 71% of people who use the Internet also used it to seek health information in 2007 and this percentage, which represents an estimated 160 million people in the United States, had increased by 37% since 200537% since ( Anonymous 2007

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... y, 2007 ) . Consumers perform health information search (HIS) and retrieval (HIR) for themselves as well as for friends and family. Studies have shown that most of these consumers do not later discuss the information with a health-care provider and that, for many people, the Internet may be the primary or even sole source of health information. ( Fox and Fallows, 2003 ) Seventy percent of people who obtain health information online say that it has infl uenced a decision about their treatment. Clearly, it is important for health care professionals to understand how their patients fi nd health information and the pitfalls associated with this activity. Indeed, given the challenges that consumers face in obtaining quality health care information from Internet sources, health-care providers will increasingly be in a position where they have to act as reviewers of information and as educators of patients who bring this information to their attention.