Library Grand Rounds

Guiding your Patients to Reliable Health Information Resources: Hints for Clinicians

I. Introduction: Health Information on the Web

The movement to increasingly involve patients in treatment decisions, the pressure to reduce the length of office visits, the growth in interest in alternative medicine, the proliferation of self-help and support groups, and the growing distrust of the managed care industry have all fueled a tremendous increase in the consumer and patient demand for health information. The Web has proved both a boon and a curse in providing a tool for easy, widespread dissemination of health information. (continued.....)

II. Evaluating Health Care Information on the Web

Anyone viewing health care information on the Web, whether patient or clinician, should learn to evaluate what they are reading. Two recent studies evaluated the accuracy and quality of information found on the Web:

• An article in the June 28, 1997, issue of the British Medical journal looked at 41 web pages which offered advice on managing fever in children at home. The authors found that only four sites offered complete and accurate information. (Impicciatore P, Pandolfini C, Casella N, Bonati M. Reliability of health information for the public on the world wide web: systematic survey of advice on managing fever in children at home. BMJ. 314(7098):1875, 1997 June 28.)

• An article in the August 1, 1999, issue of Cancer analyzed 400 web pages found by searching for "Ewing's Sarcoma" in prominent search engines. Only 165 of these pages contained actual medical information and, of those, more than a third showed no evidence of peer review and 6% had clearly erroneous information. (Biermann JS. Golladay GJ. Greenfield ML. Baker LH. Evaluation of cancer information on the Internet. Cancer. 86(3):381-90, 1999 Aug 1.) (continued.....)

Click here to link to the Biomedical Libraries Web page on website evaluation.

III. The Biomedical Libraries' Consumer Health Resources

Click here to find reliable health information on the Web.

IV. Bibliography

Click here for more information.

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