Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries

Library Grand Rounds

Guiding your Patients to Reliable Health
Information Resources: Hints for Clinicians
January 20, 2000

Dr. St. Germain's Presentation

An estimated 22 million U.S. adults went online in 1998 to find health information. Almost 1.5 million people visited just one site, drkoop.com, in May 1999. But with all of that interest in consumer-oriented health information, what kind of information are they finding? A study of 371 Web sites about Ewing's sarcoma concluded that 6% of the sites offered "clearly erroneous" information and that at least one third of the sites were not peer reviewed. (Biermann JS. Golladay GJ. Greenfield ML. Baker LH, "Evaluation of cancer information on the Internet." Cancer 86 (3):381-90, 1999 Aug 1).

Please contact Karen Odato, the Libraries' education coordinator, if you have questions or comments or suggestions for future Library Grand Rounds.

The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center designates this educational activity for up to one hour in Category I credit towards the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those hours of credit that he or she actually spent in the educational activity. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center takes responsibility for the content, quality, and scientific integrity of this CME activity.