Colleagues & Print Medical Journals are the Most Important Sources of Information to Doctors

by Alejandro Alvarez

Doctors are constantly looking to absorb medical information from a variety of sources, and these resources have evolved to include digital in the last decade or so. Despite that, colleagues and print journals continue to remain the most important information sources to surveyed physicians, according to Kantar Media Sources & Interactions Study, March 2013 – Medical/Surgical Edition.

To get a handle on these information sources, physicians were asked to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is “Least Important” and 5 is “Most Important,” the importance of 39 sources of information in helping them stay abreast of new medical developments. Here are the top 5 sources by mean importance.

Digging deeper into the study by physician specialty tells a different story. For example, cardiologists rank CME: Attendance at Meeting as more important than colleagues. Further, anesthesiologists rate Mobile Apps: Drug Reference as the third most important information source on average, while that source doesn't even crack the top five when looking at all physicians.

If you need specialty-specific data, let us know. We study physician media behaviors and preferences annually across 21 specialties.

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 21 specialties, exploring their media preferences and habits. Sources & Interactions was designed to help manufacturers 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.