According to a new report from comScore, the number of people in the US who access health information from their mobile devices is on the rise. During the months of September, October, and November last year, an average of 16.9 million people used mobile phones to access health information. That number marks a 125 percent growth rate over the same three month period in the previous year. The research firm found that about 3 in 5 or 60 percent of the mobile health information seekers were under the age of 35.
ComScore stated that at that growth rate, mobile health content is “quickly becoming one of the fastest growing content categories.”
Last year Manhattan Research reported that about 26 percent of US adults had used their mobile phones – both smartphones and not-so-smartphones – to access health information in the past year. The firm reported that only 12 percent of US adults had searched for health information via mobile devices in its 2010 report.
In its October 2010 survey, the Pew found that of the 85 percent of American adults who used a mobile phone at the time, 17 percent had used their phones to look up health or medical information.