Suarez-Almazor ME, Kendall CJ, Dorgan M; International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Meeting.
Annu Meet Int Soc Technol Assess Health Care Int Soc Technol Assess Health Care Meet. 1999; 15: 41.
Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton AB T6G 2S2, Canada.
OBJECTIVE: In the past few years, access to the Internet has become readily available. Evidence shows that patients are increasingly seeking and obtaining health information through the Internet, most often the World Wide Web (WWW). Because of the breadth of the available data, health-related contents have seldom been critically appraised. The purpose of this study was to assess the content, scope and quality of the information available on the World Wide Web in relation to rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: A broad electronic search using the terms 'rheumatoid arthritis' was conducted using WebCrawler, one of the commonly used search engines for the WWW (used by AmericaOnLine (R)), The search was broad in an attempt to replicate use by average patients. All the "hits" were critically assessed after visiting and collecting information from the respective sites. The following areas were included in the assessment: relevance to patients with rheumatoid arthritis, authorship, type (news, advertisement, research paper, etc.), scope (disease targets, interventions), and financial interests. RESULTS: The search found 537 hits: 531 were evaluated, 2 did not exist, 2 could not be contacted, 1 was not in English, and 1 required a membership to access. The 531 hits were distributed over 388 sites: 198 (50%) were relevant, 183 (47%) were not relevant, and 7 (2%) were of doubtful relevance. Of the relevant or doubtfully relevant sites, 14 (7%) discussed RA only, 46 (22%) arthritis in general, 5 (2%) autoimmune diseases, and 140 (68%) many diverse diseases. Thirty-four (17%) were authored by an individual, 57 (28%) by a non-profit organization, 104 (51%) by a profit industry, and 10 (5%) by universities. Ninety-nine (43%) were advertisements, 74 (32%) were information sites, 27 (12%) were link pages, 12 (5%) had news articles, 10 (4%) posted research results, three (1%) were recruiting for research, two (1%) had chat locations, one (1%) was a case study, and one (1%) was a support group. Ninety-one (44%) promoted alternative therapies, the most common included cetyl-myristoleate, colloidal mineral, Pycnogenol, shark cartilage and Tahitian Noni. Financially, 87 (42%) primarily sold products, 16 (8%) sold products indirectly, 2 (1%) demanded paid memberships, and 2 (1%) asked for donations. Of the 107 sites with financial interests, 76 (71%) promoted alternative medicine. CONCLUSIONS: Typical sites easily accessed by consumers appear to be profit based companies advertising an alternative product which it claims to be effective on many conditions. This emphasizes the need for critical evaluation of web site contents.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Advertising as Topic
- Arthritis
- Arthritis, Rheumatoid
- Complementary Therapies
- Humans
- Internet
- Language
- Sports
- hsrmtgs
Other ID:
UI: 102193902
From Meeting Abstracts