Colleagues & Print Medical Journals Continue to Be the Most Important Information Sources to Doctors

by Jaime Brewster

To get a handle on the information sources doctors value, we ask physicians to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is “Least Important” and 5 is “Most Important,” the importance of 41 sources of information in helping them stay abreast of new medical developments. Above you’ll find the top 5 sources by mean importance.

Colleagues and print journals continue to be the most important information sources to physicians, according to the Sources & Interactions Study, September 2013: Medical/Surgical Edition, followed closely by CME: Attendance at Meetings and by two new digital information sources: online patient medical records and online prescribing software.

Digging deeper into the study by physician specialty tells a different story. For example, Internal Medicine physicians rank print medical journals as more important than colleagues. Further, Allergists rate Convention Attendance as the third most important information source on average, while that source doesn't even crack the top five when looking at all physicians.

The Sources & Interactions™ Study is a detailed examination of doctors’ online and mobile activities, e-detailing experience, and exposure to (and evaluation of) information sources including traditional and emerging media, pharma reps, CME, convention and more. The study is conducted every six months and targets more than 3,000 physicians annually across 22 specialties, exploring their media preferences and habits. Sources & Interactions was designed to help marketers and their agencies cost-effectively allocate resources to their overall promotional mix, and provide publishers with specific insight about where their offerings fit into physicians (and other healthcare professionals’) information inventory.

If you need specialty-specific data, let us know. We study physician media behaviors and preferences annually across 22 specialties.