The Virtual En-psych-lopedia at Dr. Bob
to Deutsch Français Japanese Italiano Chinese Portuguese Español Korean [ Links | Tips | Babble | Rounds | Pamphlets ] [ Home | Quality | Books | Statistics | Feedback | Support ]

Quality of Information

You can find a lot of information on the Internet. In general, that's good, but it does also leave you with the task of separating the wheat from the chaff. Before you act on something you read -- even if you read it here :-) -- take a moment first to consider the quality of that information. You probably already do that automatically to some extent, but the links below may also help.

• Advisory on the Use of Medical Web Sites, ATA
• Code of Conduct, HON
• Criteria for Assessing the Quality of Health Information on the Internet, HITI
• Finding Quality Health Information on the Internet, IHC
• How to Find the Best Health Information Online, BMJ
• How to Recognize a Reliable Health Care Web Site, U Iowa
• Information Epidemics, Economics, and Immunity on the Internet, Coiera, BMJ
• Internet Resource Evaluation, Megasite Project
• Measuring Quality and Impact of the World Wide Web, Wyatt, BMJ
• Medical Informatics Standards and (Internet or Quality Control), PubMed
• Published Criteria for Evaluating Health Related Web Sites, Kim, BMJ
• Quackwatch
• Quality Standards for Medical Publishing on the Web, BHIA
• Rating Health Information on the Internet, Jadad, JAMA
• Resource Evaluation, Biome

Remember to look beyond the names of sites and organizations. Anyone could call themselves the Health Education Authority, as a hypothetical example, and then go on irresponsibly to provide misleading or even dangerous information...

Be not too hasty ... to trust, or to admire, the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men. --Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, 1825

Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD, dr-bob@uchicago.edu

Revised: May 5, 2003
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/quality.html
Copyright 1999-2003 Robert Hsiung.