Internet by English-speaking patients

and Pierre Prémont The aim of this research is to determine the kinds of health-related information that patients seek more often from websites written in English, and at which stages of the healthcare decisional process they use this information more intensively. A quantitative study was performed. Canadian English-speaking patients who have long-term diseases and who use the Internet completed an 18-item questionnaire online. Respondents were questioned about the categories of health-related websites they visit the most (scientifi c, general, commercial websites, or discussion groups) and the stages of the medical decisional process during which they use the information obtained (identifi cation of possible treatments, treatment choice, and treatment application or follow-up). Results show that respondents use Internet information displayed in English mostly at the stages of identifi cation of possible treatments (94.2%) and treatment application or follow-up (86%). At these two stages, patients look more often for information from scientifi c websites