Health on the Net: Do Website Searches Return Reliable Health Information on Hemorrhoids and Their Treatment?

Ng, Matthew Wen Long; Smith, Riley; Wickramesinghe, Nilmini; Smart, Philip; Lawrentschuk, Nathan

doi:10.9738/intsurg-d-17-00099.1

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Reasonable and attentive use of health information available on the internet could contribute to the improve preventive medicine strategies, and can guide people in moving towards a personalized approach to their health problems. 59 , 60 In view of this, responsible efforts for assessing the quality of the amount of online global health information should be addressed. 61 Education on the quality of health web sites by governments or education institutions is necessary and could contribute to the development of new strategies in the field of preventive and personalized medicine.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the quality and reliability of online health information

et al. 2020

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Background Internet represents a relevant source of information, but reliability of data that can be obtained by the web is still an unsolved issue. Non-reliable online information may have a relevance, especially in taking decisions related to health problems. Uncertainties on the quality of online health data may have a negative impact on health-related choices of citizens. Objective This work consisted in a cross-sectional literature review of published papers on online health information. The two main research objectives consisted in the analysis of trends in the use of health web sites and in the quality assessment and reliability levels of web medical sites. Methods Literature research was made using four digital reference databases, namely PubMed, British Medical Journal, Biomed, and CINAHL. Entries used were “trustworthy of medical information online,” “survey to evaluate medical information online,” “medical information online,” and “habits of web-based health information users”. Analysis included only papers published in English. The Newcastle Ottawa Scale was used to conduct quality checks of selected works. Results Literature analysis using the above entries resulted in 212 studies. Twenty-four articles in line with study objectives, and user characteristics were selected. People more prone to use the internet for obtaining health information were females, younger people, scholars, and employees. Reliability of different online health sites is an issue taken into account by the majority of people using the internet for obtaining health information and physician assistance could help people to surf more safe health web sites. Conclusions Limited health information and/or web literacy can cause misunderstandings in evaluating medical data found in the web. An appropriate education plan and evaluation tools could enhance user skills and bring to a more cautious analysis of health information found in the web.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting the quality and reliability of online health information

et al. 2020

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“…In addition, a qualitative observation that was made in the study was that information published by health websites was spaced out and there was ample use of dot points and small paragraphs, making it easier and less overwhelming to read. Information published by profit or non‐profit companies often employ editorial media teams to produce content that aligns with the DISCERN principles and JAMA criteria, 23 for their information to be credible and create trust amongst internet users.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is particularly concerning as medical practitioners may not be aware in following DISCERN principles or JAMA criteria when publishing information and mainly rely on their authority and status to warrant the reliability of the content 23 . They may also foster beliefs that adding unnecessary information and content may confuse the patients instead, however not realizing that patients are now more willing to be well informed about their condition and procedure 23 . Having information that has low reliability and readability may cause patients distrust with medical practitioners and misinterpreting information leading may lead to inappropriate healthcare decisions 20 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…23 They may also foster beliefs that adding unnecessary information and content may confuse the patients instead, however not realizing that patients are now more willing to be well informed about their condition and procedure. 23 Having information that has low reliability and readability may cause patients distrust with medical practitioners and misinterpreting information leading may lead to inappropriate healthcare decisions. 20 Given the incidence of rising misinformation on health conditions, it is important for medical practitioners to publish health information that is reliable and readable for the mass population.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dr Google – assessing the reliability and readability of information on general surgical procedures found via search engines

Ramli

Jambor

Kong

2023

ANZ Journal of Surgery

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Background The most common general surgical emergency operations are laparoscopic appendicectomy, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, hernia repair, hemorrhoidectomy and colectomy. Patients commonly perform an internet search for more information prior to undergoing surgery, which can lead to an inappropriate understanding of their procedure. The aim is to assess the quality of information available on three of the most used search engines. Methods A search was conducted on http://google.com, http://bing.com and http://yahoo.com using the terms related to laparoscopic appendicectomy, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, hemorrhoidectomy, hernia repair and colectomy. First 20 results from each search engine were collected for evaluation. Results were excluded if they were sponsored, duplicates, academic publications, advertisements, forums, audiovisual tools, social media or any non‐English information. Included results were assessed for reliability using DISCERN and JAMA benchmark score. Readability was assessed using Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) Score and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG). Results Hundred and ninety‐seven websites were analysed, 44.7% were published by institutions, 34.5% by health websites and 20.8% by independent surgeons. Mean DISCERN scores for Institutions was 54.6 ± 11.3, independent surgeons 45.9 ± 11.4 and health websites 58.7 ± 10.3. Mean JAMA score for Institutions was 1.0 ± 1.0, independent surgeons 0.1 ± 0.4 and health websites 1.7 ± 1.1. FRE scores for institutions was 51.6 ± 10.3, independent surgeons 40.9 ± 10.2, and health websites 45.7 ± 12.3. SMOG scores were 9.8 ± 1.5 for institutions, 11.4 ± 1.6 for independent surgeons and 10.6 ± 1.7 for health websites. Conclusion Health information on common general surgical procedures found on search engines are generally fair to good quality but still above the suggested reading level of the population. Information on surgical procedures should be written at recommended reading level of 13–14 years old.

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“…Currently, web search engines (WSEs) have become the preferred way to find health care-related content on the World Wide Web. A recent survey reports that more than 80% of patients use WSE to seek health-related information before consulting the physician [1], while according to the report published by Pew Research Center, 35% of American adults consulted WSE to diagnose medical conditions [2]. However, while using the web search services, the user usually posts their physical condition and health information as a query [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

QuPiD Attack: Machine Learning-Based Privacy Quantification Mechanism for PIR Protocols in Health-Related Web Search

Khan

Ahmad

Alsayed

et al. 2020

Scientific Programming

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With the advancement in ICT, web search engines have become a preferred source to find health-related information published over the Internet. Google alone receives more than one billion health-related queries on a daily basis. However, in order to provide the results most relevant to the user, WSEs maintain the users’ profiles. These profiles may contain private and sensitive information such as the user’s health condition, disease status, and others. Health-related queries contain privacy-sensitive information that may infringe user’s privacy, as the identity of a user is exposed and may be misused by the WSE and third parties. This raises serious concerns since the identity of a user is exposed and may be misused by third parties. One well-known solution to preserve privacy involves issuing the queries via peer-to-peer private information retrieval protocol, such as useless user profile (UUP), thereby hiding the user’s identity from the WSE. This paper investigates the level of protection offered by UUP. For this purpose, we present QuPiD (query profile distance) attack: a machine learning-based attack that evaluates the effectiveness of UUP in privacy protection. QuPiD attack determines the distance between the user’s profile (web search history) and upcoming query using our proposed novel feature vector. The experiments were conducted using ten classification algorithms belonging to the tree-based, rule-based, lazy learner, metaheuristic, and Bayesian families for the sake of comparison. Furthermore, two subsets of an America Online dataset (noisy and clean datasets) were used for experimentation. The results show that the proposed QuPiD attack associates more than 70% queries to the correct user with a precision of over 72% for the clean dataset, while for the noisy dataset, the proposed QuPiD attack associates more than 40% queries to the correct user with 70% precision.

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Health on the Net: Do Website Searches Return Reliable Health Information on Hemorrhoids and Their Treatment?

Cited by 4 publications

References 13 publications

Factors affecting the quality and reliability of online health information

Factors affecting the quality and reliability of online health information

Dr Google – assessing the reliability and readability of information on general surgical procedures found via search engines

QuPiD Attack: Machine Learning-Based Privacy Quantification Mechanism for PIR Protocols in Health-Related Web Search

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