Quality of Patient Health Information on the Internet: reviewing a complex and evolving landscape

Fahy, Eamonn; Hardikar, Rohan; Fox, Adrian; Mackay, Sean

doi:10.21767/amj.2014.1900

Cited by 66 publications

(89 citation statements)

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“…Consistent with previous studies [4,13,19], our findings highlight the potential of Wikipedia as a valuable resource for health-related information. Still, the quality of Wikipedia articles relies on the willingness of experienced and knowledgeable contributors to take on the unpaid labor of editing and improving Wikipedia articles.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Discussions regarding the quality of health-related information on the internet go back as far as the late 1990s [1,2] and have not stopped ever since [3][4][5]. Consulting the internet for healthrelated information has undoubtedly become a common and widespread phenomenon [6,7].…”

Section: Health Information Onlinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consulting the internet for healthrelated information has undoubtedly become a common and widespread phenomenon [6,7]. Over the last several years, Wikipedia has emerged as one of the most important knowledge resources for health-related information on the web [4,8,9]. In this paper we (1) describe potential quality issues as indicated by community applied tags in health-related Wikipedia articles, and we (2) analyze the importance of contributor experience for the quality of health-related Wikipedia articles.…”

Section: Health Information Onlinementioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Contributor Experience on the Quality of Health-Related Wikipedia Articles (Preprint)

Holtz¹,

Fetahu²,

Kimmerle³

2017

Preprint

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ObjectiveIn our study we have hypothesized a positive effect of contributor experience on the quality of health-related Wikipedia articles. MethodsWe mined the edit history of all (as of February 2017) 18,805 articles within the domain health & fitness in the English language version of Wikipedia. We identified tags within the articles' edit histories, which indicated potential issues with regard to the respective article's quality or neutrality. Out of all of the sampled articles, 99 (0.53%) articles had at some point received at least one such tag. In our analysis we only considered those articles with a minimum of ten edits (10,265 articles in total; 96 tagged articles, 0.93%). Additionally, to test our hypothesis, we constructed contributor profiles, where a profile consisted of all the articles edited by a contributor and the corresponding number of edits contributed. Results Independent sample t-tests ConclusionsOur findings indicate an effect of contributor experience on the quality of health-related Wikipedia articles. However, the breadth of previously edited articles is a stronger predictor than the mere volume of edits. More research is needed to disentangle the different aspects of contributor experience. We discuss implications of our findings with respect to ensuring the quality of health-related information in collaborative knowledge building platforms.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Health Information Onlinementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Health Information Onlinementioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Contributor Experience on the Quality of Health-Related Wikipedia Articles (Preprint)

Holtz¹,

Fetahu²,

Kimmerle³

2017

Preprint

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“…Three of the most utilised instruments (Fahy et al, 2014) will be referred to herein, along with a brief justification of the instrument of choice to evaluate our indicative case study. HONcode is one of the earlier quality evaluation tools, created by the Health on the Net Foundation (HON) in 1995.…”

Section: Assessing Quality Of Online Health Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exercising soft closure on lay health knowledge? Harnessing the declining power of the medical profession to improve online health information

Naghieh

Parvizi

2016

Soc Theory Health

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This study aims to address the increasingly complex medical predicament of low quality online health information contributing to lay health knowledge and consequently to clinical outcomes. We situate the predicament within a social change paradigm of individualism, choice, diminishing medical power, and emergence of the legitimacy of lay health knowledge. We contend that the prominence of lay health knowledge has been facilitated by the internet, and is due to a surge in broadcasting of experiential knowledge coupled with increased access to and enactment of medical and non-medically sanctioned online information on health and illness. We draw on and further test the application of social closure theory to help conceive a potential solution to this enduring problem. We conduct a quality assessment of an indicative case study, Apicectomies, and test the application of our notion of soft closure on its findings, resulting in targeted, feasible and potentially beneficial solutions to increasing the medical quality of online health information. We further present the extant application of soft closure by Healthtalkonline.org, which collates a medically reliable set of experiential knowledge on a range of health issues. As such, we propose a constructive re-enactment of the traditional closure of the medical profession on medical knowledge. 2 Abstract word count: 201

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“…Search engines use algorithms including, among other factors, the number of incoming links from other pages, meaning popular websites rank highly. Paid advertisements are also prominent in search results and therefore there is no guarantee to the scientific reliability of information found in a search [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diet and Multiple Sclerosis: Scoping Review of Web-Based Recommendations (Preprint)

Beckett¹,

Bird²,

Pittaway³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Quality of Patient Health Information on the Internet: reviewing a complex and evolving landscape

Cited by 66 publications

References 0 publications

Effects of Contributor Experience on the Quality of Health-Related Wikipedia Articles (Preprint)

Effects of Contributor Experience on the Quality of Health-Related Wikipedia Articles (Preprint)

Exercising soft closure on lay health knowledge? Harnessing the declining power of the medical profession to improve online health information

Diet and Multiple Sclerosis: Scoping Review of Web-Based Recommendations (Preprint)

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