The Internet is the world's most powerful vehicle for exercising personal choice. It out-performs all other mediums in its ability to inform, educate and empower the individual - and, as Wendy Champagne discovers, nowhere is that more evident than in the burgeoning field of e-Health.

Twenty years ago your doctor was the gatekeeper to medical knowledge, because of the high cost and inaccessibility of medical books and research, a patient had little choice but to place the entire responsibility for their health in the hands of their GP.

Today the landscape has changed dramatically. With medical information freely available on the Internet patients are learning more about their conditions, causing a shift in the traditional gestalt of the doctor/patient relationship. Patients are arriving at their GPs armed with knowledge of their illnesses gained from the Net and doctors are being asked to interpret this information as well as act as offer medical advice and treatment.

While it looks like a win-win situation for patients, there is one major concern - the quality of online health information. It is from this need for sound, up-to-date, reputable health material that the HealthAnswers website has grown.

"We wanted to set up a site that would stand out in the crowd and be a pinnacle for Australian health," says Dr David Taylor, GP and Chief Medical Officer for HealthAnswers. "People are going to find out about their disease these days; they are more open, they question a lot more and want second opinions, they want to become more aware. But that awareness needs to be tied in with quality."

As of July this year, the Telstra HealthAnswers site was generating about two million hits a month, with over 40,000 individual users and 10,000 repeat users spending on an average of fifteen minutes per session.

These figures expose both the determination of many Australians to augment their health knowledge, and reveal one of the extraordinary success stories of the Australian Internet.

"Our encyclopaedia is all evidence-based medicine,' says Dr Taylor, "and the drug database has both a consumer and product index which is basically the same type of thing I use in my surgery. The readers can be sure the material is sound and up-to-date; and the articles are researched and reviewed and supported by evidence-based medicine."

Harnessing the power of the Net to even greater effect, doctors are now offering online consultation. Dr Simon Leslie, chief of operations in Australia for the world's first direct online medical consultation service, Dr Global, believes the accessibility factor of the Internet will push the demand for online medical consultation.

Dr Global's cache of experienced medical practitioners act in the new role of "information managers". According to Dr Leslie, their service is not designed to replace general practitioners but rather to assist the role of the conventional person-to-person consultation by offering information specific to a patient's condition. Dr Global also offers the 'Doctor Global Health Record' - a server with encrypted security - that allows a patient to store his or her medical records.

Instead of having a paper file at home, radiology files, immunisation details, allergies, medications details, your entire medical history can be stored at a secure site that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. It's also available for use at all times by your own doctors and provides an infrastructure for those doctors to offer a more efficient service.

"We want the individual to have power over their own health," says Dr Leslie. "Not just see a doctor when they are sick but to look at ways they can prevent illness based on their own health history and lifestyle."

In the future, as the Internet pervades more deeply into every individual life, a patient may not only be seeking medical advice online but also receiving treatment, in the form of prescription drugs. And despite the obvious dangers of prescribing drugs over the Internet, it is already a reality in a few states in the USA, and although Australia doesn't condone this service, Viagra for example has travelled a laneway through the Internet into this country for some time.

"At the end of the day your doctor should be responsible for prescribing drugs and taking care of your health,' says Dr Taylor. "If you take that control away from the doctor, you're asking for trouble."

Notwithstanding the dangers of professional misrepresentation and drug availability, the Internet is providing a positive pathway for change to our health delivery. People can now communicate via the Net to people who share their illnesses, gathering strength and information to better deal with their own.

They can build their own medical records online, saving time and money on reproduced tests. And more importantly, through reputed sites like HealthAnswers, an individual or group now has access to current medical data to improve and enhance the quality of their lives.