A cornerstone of 'meaningful use' of health information is engaging consumers and their families. Yet for consumers to be engaged requires an informed population and therefore focus on consumer's health information needs. Reports indicated consumers want health information, yet little was known about their internet use or perception of electronic health information. This New Zealand study surve...

PURPOSE Side effects and side-effect risk information can be provided using written medicine information. However, challenges exist in effectively communicating this information to consumers. This study aimed to explore broad consumer profiles relevant to ramipril and clopidogrel side-effect risk information interpretation. METHODS Three focus groups were conducted (n=18 consumers) exploring ...

On May 19, 2005, Grantmakers In Health (GIH) convened nearly 50 grantmakers and leaders in the field of health care quality to discuss the challenges inherent in developing quality information, as well as how consumers use such information. This Issue Brief examines the potential of consumers to use information to select high-quality health services and to become drivers of quality improvement ...

OBJECTIVE Several provincial and federal bills have recommended various forms of menu labelling that would require information beyond just calories; however, the additional benefit of including sodium information is unknown. The objective of this study was to determine whether sodium information on menus helps consumers make lower-sodium choices and to understand what other factors influence th...

Whether consumers are aware of potentially adverse product effects is key to private and social incentives to disclose information about undesirable product characteristics. In a monopoly model with a mix of aware and unaware consumers, a larger share of unaware consumers makes information disclosure less likely to occur. Since the firm is not interested in releasing information to unaware cons...

We analyze a model of monopolistic price discrimination where only some consumers are originally sufficiently informed about their preferences, e.g., about their future demand for a utility such as electricity or telecommunication. When more consumers become informed, we show that this benefits also those consumers who remain uninformed, as it reduces the firm’s incentives to extract informatio...

To effectively pursue a strategy of focused marketing, Internet businesses need to solicit personal information from consumers. Indeed, many Internet businesses have been offering consumers economic benefits (like monetary rewards) in exchange for their personal information. However, a more cost-effective way to solicit such personal information may be to use psychological benefits. This study ...