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Information on medicine and health has been made much more accessible from all fronts in the new information society. That is, more accessible to viewers, or the public: the informants and speakers, as well as the members of the medical and scientific community themselves. However, the accessibility for the public, the speakers and the scientific community comes with another problem: the avalanche of information. In this paper we take the Internet’s avalanche of information into consideration from various points of view. For the media, this phenomenon grows in importance daily. The availability of information through digital resources on topics concerning medicine and health is growing. However, not all of the resources available online are trustworthy sources, making it necessary to establish some quality control standards for them. Now we can find a situation in which quality information is displayed side by side with inexact information. In this sense, we can affirm that the ICT (information and communication technologies) has facilitated the information explosion in a framework where high quality information from recognised, solvent and credible people, groups and institutions are displayed along with imprecise, incomplete, non-peered review, non-vigorous, and even purposely erroneous information. Digital resources that the medical profession has access to are also accessed by the media and public opinion. Information that offers these digital resources are accessible to all of the scientific community.

Patients are turning increasingly to blogs to learn about health and to share experiences related to this area. These blogs are written by patients or health professionals and constitute an exceptional aid for the promotion of education in health issues for this population. The high educational level of the bloggers, the variety of sources of information used and the different aims pursued make these blogs full participants in the health area. The article concludes that the blog is a new meeting point between doctor and patient that has a positive impact on the improvement of the health service offered by hospitals.

Public demand for information about health matters has led several organizations to develop custom systems for self-management of medical information. These systems facilitate the management of this information by the public, health care professionals, public institutions, companies and groups of patients. Thanks to new technologies, patients are taking an active role in searching the internet with queries about health-related issues, which gives rise to a debate about the accreditations of web pages that disseminate health information. In this context, Google, with applications such as Google Health, Flu Trends and Android, and Microsoft, with its HealthVault utility, have become the maximum exponents of medical information management software.

The great interest that health generates in people has led to several Spanish institutions of the health sector to improve the communication value of newsletters, online patients forums, brochures, online videos, mobile phone and infography, among others. The aim to educate the patients and differing themselves strategically from other institutions finds in the technology a strategic partner that affords many benefits to the target audience (immediacy, interactivity) and to the organization (brand image, time optimization). One of the most representative initiatives of this trend is the creation of infographies about health matters that, respecting the scientific, informative, didactic and ethical rigour, are spread throughout different media.

The electronic newspaper concept undergoes a permanent metamorphosis caused by the continuing transformation of the information structure in the digital environment. The new public audience for cyberjournalism demands updated and hypersegmented content based on collective participation. Economic information is an example that shows both processes, which can be seen with the success and popularity of the platforms for news distribution. This article aims to help understand the change produced since 2007 and tries to describe the scene in which cybermedia will have to compete, assuming new coordinates in the media universe of the internet

La información sobre medicina y salud se ha hecho más accesible desde todos los frentes en la nueva sociedad del conocimiento. Más accesible para la audiencia de los medios, es decir, el público; los propios informadores y comunicadores, y para los propios miembros de la comunidad médica y científica.Sin embargo, la accesibilidad que percibe el público, comunicadores y la comunidad científica convive con otra peculiaridad, la inflación de información.Desde diversas ópticas se ha planteado la tormenta de información que se presenta a través de la red Internet. En los medios de comunicación este fenómeno es cada día más significativo.La disponibilidad de información a través de recursos digitales en temas relacionados con la información sobre medicina y salud es creciente. Sin embargo, no todos los recursos presentes en la red telemática Internet son fiables como fuente, por lo que es necesario establecer unos estándares de control de calidad de dichos recursos. Se identifica una situación en la que datos de gran calidad se ofrecen junto a informaciones imprecisas.En este sentido, se ha afirmado que las TIC (tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación) han facilitado la explosión de información en un marco donde conviven datos de gran calidad procedentes de personas, de grupos y de instituciones, con afiliaciones reconocidamente solventes y creíbles, con informaciones imprecisas, incompletas, no contrastadas, carentes de rigurosidad e, incluso, hasta malintencionadamente erróneas.Los recursos digitales a los que tiene acceso la profesión médica, igualmente los tiene el medio de comunicación y la opinión pública. Las informaciones que contienen dichos recursos digitales son accesibles a su vez para toda la comunidad científica.