How to find the good and avoid the bad or ugly: a short guide to tools for rating quality of health information on the internet * Commentary: On the way to quality

Influences, usage, and outcomes of Internet health information searching: Multivariate results from the Pew surveys

“…A variety of approaches have been proposed or developed for assessing and indicating the quality of Internet health information (Agency for Health Care Policy and Research 1999;Wilson, 2002);however, Risk (2002) is skeptical about the utility of any of these approaches. There are also many technical, legal, economic, and attitudinal barriers to the widespread or largely beneficial use of online health information and services (Berg, 2002;Katz, Rice, & Acord, 2004;Rice, 2003).…”

The Quality of Online Health-Related Information – an Emergent Consumer Health Issue

“…Even though there are a number of technical and methodological differences between the various quality initiatives for the health Internet, they all have a common feature, which is the concept of normative criteria for best practices when it comes to sharing health-related information online [75].…”

“…The recommendations are based on a set of quality criteria. The Codes of conduct provide to health website developers a description of the self-evaluation process that must be implemented and explain to websites owners and users as well the best practices to be followed in disseminating high-quality health-related information, so that the website designers be able to respect the principles of website creation and the users be enabled to identify the websites not complying with the recommended practices [75].…”

“…The maintenance of the health-related information quality standards over time as required by the code of conduct is usually checked on a regular basis and in case a website has departed from the code that has committed to abide by, it is either warned to make the necessary steps to reinsure its compliance with the code or it is demanded to remove the seal. Users may also notify the organization in cases of fraudulent use of the label [75,78].…”

“…Systematic reviews published over the last decade have identified between tens and hundreds of quality evaluation instruments for health-related information on the Internet [72][73][74][75].…”