Verifiable Health Information on the Internet

Abstract

The Internet has become an important source of health information. However, several empirical studies indicate that there is a significant amount of inaccurate health information on the Internet. Thus, it is important that Internet users be able to distinguish the accurate information from the inaccurate information. Information professionals have developed checklists for evaluating the quality of health information to assist Internet users in this regard. Such checklists can only be effective if the proposed indicators of accuracy really do indicate accuracy. This article reports on two empirical studies that implement an effective technique for identifying such indicators of accuracy. In particular, one of these studies indicates that the HONcode logo is more likely to be displayed on web sites that contain accurate health information. Many commonly proposed indicators of accuracy (e.g., the author having medical credentials, currency, lack of advertising) were not found to be correlated with accuracy.