Instruments to assess the quality of health information on the World Wide Web: what can our patients actually use?

Summary 

Objective:

To find and assess quality-rating instruments that can be used by health care consumers to assess websites displaying health information.

Data sources:

Searches of PubMed, the World Wide Web (using five different search engines), reference tracing from identified articles, and a review of the of the American Medical Informatics Association's annual symposium proceedings.

Review methods:

Sources were examined for availability, number of elements, objectivity, and readability.

Results:

A total of 273 distinct instruments were found and analyzed. Of these, 80 (29%) made evaluation criteria publicly available and 24 (8.7%) had 10 or fewer elements (items that a user has to assess to evaluate a website). Seven instruments consisted of elements that could all be evaluated objectively. Of these seven, one instrument consisted entirely of criteria with acceptable interobserver reliability (kappa≥0.6); another instrument met readability standards.

Conclusions:

There are many quality-rating instruments, but few are likely to be practically usable by the intended audience.

Keywords: Internet, Medical informatics, Patient education