Can Patients Trust Online Health Information? A Meta-narrative Systematic Review Addressing the Quality of Health Information on the Internet

Background The Internet has become a leading source of health information accessed by patients and the general public. It is crucial that this information is reliable and accurate. Objectives The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate the overall quality of online health information targe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM Vol. 34; no. 9; pp. 1884 - 1891
Main Authors: Daraz, Lubna, Morrow, Allison S., Ponce, Oscar J., Beuschel, Bradley, Farah, Magdoleen H., Katabi, Abdulrahman, Alsawas, Mouaz, Majzoub, Abdul M., Benkhadra, Raed, Seisa, Mohamed O., Ding, Jingyi (Francess), Prokop, Larry, Murad, M. Hassan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York Springer US 01.09.2019
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Anesthesiology
Consumer Health Information - standards
Health
Health literacy
Humans
Information systems
Internal Medicine
Internet
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Quality
Quality assessment
Quality control
Review Paper
Systematic review
Websites
online health information
Internet
health literacy
systematic review
patient education
quality
ISSN:0884-8734, 1525-1497, 1525-1497
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Background The Internet has become a leading source of health information accessed by patients and the general public. It is crucial that this information is reliable and accurate. Objectives The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate the overall quality of online health information targeting patients and the general public. Methods The systematic review is based on a pre-established protocol and is reported according to the PRISMA statement. Eleven databases and Internet searches were performed for relevant studies. Descriptive statistics were used to synthesize data. The NIH Quality Assessment Tool for Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies was used to assess the methodological quality of the included studies. Results Out of 3393 references, we included 153 cross-sectional studies evaluating 11,785 websites using 14 quality assessment tools. The quality level varied across scales. Using DISCERN, none of the websites received a category of excellent in quality, 37–79% were rated as good , and the rest were rated as poor quality. Only 18% of websites were HON Code certified. Quality varied by affiliation (governmental was higher than academic, which was higher than other media sources) and by health specialty (likely higher in internal medicine and anesthesiology). Conclusion This comprehensive systematic review demonstrated suboptimal quality of online health information. Therefore, the Internet at the present time does not provide reliable health information for laypersons. The quality of online health information requires significant improvement which should be a mandate for policymakers and private and public organizations.
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ISSN:0884-8734
1525-1497
1525-1497
DOI:10.1007/s11606-019-05109-0