Consumer advocacy groups. Since the early 1990s the growing trend in the US and Europe has been for consumers to pursue their healthcare needs and grievances through large, well organised, and in many cases well financed bodies of healthcare users. The phenomenon is still a novelty. For most of the post-war period the strongest voice on medical matters came from professional societies of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners. Such bodies, however, rarely consulted or represented the interests of patients.
Information now speeds round the globe at the touch of a button.
Vehicles for conveying data have multiplied, with the Internet proving the most potent provider for consumers, who are becoming more medically literate. According to management consultants Booz Allen Hamilton, by 2001 50m Europeans will be online. A US medical information provider, HealthAnswersInternational, is planning a listing in Hong Kong and is to launch its broadband Internet services in alliance with Hong Kong's Sun Hung Kai Properties. Despite high capital costs, inadequate basic infrastructure and the reluctance of the medical profession to endorse the digitisation of medicine, the technology continues to have global appeal. Countries as diverse as Cuba, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and Italy all have significant telemedicine projects.