Credibility of Healthcare information on the Internet

Health - as we have repeatedly seen - is the second most searched for topic on the internet. This obviously means that the number of websites catering to healthcare information is also amongst the most prolific. But with all this information available online, it is very easy to get sucked in by unscrupulous elements that have an ulterior motive in spreading dangerous or deceitful information. How then does one ensure that the information available is true and useful? This is precisely the reason for the existence of the Health On the Net Foundation - or HON as it is better known.

About HON

The Health On the Net Foundation (HON) promotes and guides the deployment of useful and reliable online health information, and its appropriate and efficient use. Created in 1995, HON is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, accredited to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. For 20 years, HON has focused on the essential question of the provision of health information to citizens, information that respects ethical standards. To cope with the unprecedented volume of healthcare information available on the Net, the HONcode of conduct offers a multi-stakeholder consensus on standards to protect citizens from misleading health information.

HONcode Facts

The HONcode is a code of ethics that guides site managers in setting up a minimum set of mechanisms to provide quality, objective and transparent medical information tailored to the needs of the audience. HONcode is the oldest and the most used ethical and trustworthy code for medical and health related information available on Internet. The HONcode is designed for three target audiences: the general public, the healthcare professionals and the web publisher, actively involving the site owner in the process of certification. The HONcode is the most widely accepted reference for online health and medical publishers. Currently the HONcode is used by over 7’300 certified websites, more than 10 million pages, covering 102 countries.

Please note: HON cannot guarantee the accuracy of medical information presented by a site and its completeness at any given time, but possession of the HONcode seal allows a site to demonstrate its intention to contribute to quality medical information through the publication of objective and transparent information.

HONcode Principles

The 8 HONcode Principles are as follows:

• Principle 1 - Authority: Give qualifications of authors
• Principle 2 - Complementarity: Information to support, not replace
• Principle 3 - Confidentiality: Respect the privacy of site users
• Principle 4 - Attribution: Cite the sources and dates of medical information
• Principle 5 - Justifiability: Justification of claims / balanced and objective claims
• Principle 6 - Transparency: Accessibility, provide valid contact details
• Principle 7 - Financial disclosure: Provide details of funding
• Principle 8 - Advertising: Clearly distinguish advertising from editorial content

The Certification System

The HONcode is a certification system that can be requested by anyone publishing healthcare information on the world wide web. This applies to sites catering to patients, healthcare professionals or even the general public whetehr or not it has a strictly health or medical focus. All requests for certification are voluntary, but considering that it adds credibility to the website, publishers could very well go for it.

What makes the HONcode certification credible is that each submission is evaluated by a review committee comprising professional healthcare professionals. The committee visits the target website and ascertains that it verifies all of the 8 ethical principles. If it doesn't the owner/publisher is informed about the same and guided to make the content or website compliant. Once a site is certified, it is given a dynamic seal to place on its pages which annouce that it is HONcode compliant. The certified sites are re-evaluated each year (as a paid service). Ad-hoc reviews may also be conducted in case there is a specific complaint or a technical malfunction detected by the monitoring services. HON is the only organization to enforce its code through a formal complaint mechanism.

So the next time you are searching for relevant medical information on the Internet, take a step back to see if the website you are browsing is HONcode compliant. The process is rather simple with a `downloadable toolbar provided by the foundation. The toolbars come as plug-ins for both Internet Explorer and Firefox and can be downloaded from the HON site here. Toolbars for other browser versions are available here.