Future Now
The IFTF Blog
More on the accuracy of online health information (and a digression into Web 3.0)
Last week, I posted an entry about a recent study reported in Cancer about the accuracy of health information available online. Today, there is news from the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Its latest report posits that information prominently displayed in search engine results is often not only misleading and confusing, but also potentially dangerous for patients. Using two safe and effective prescription medications (Crestor and Avandia) as test examples, researchers found that nearly 65% of the first three pages of Google search results came from sites that were biased or contained unverified information.
So how can people ensure that they are finding credible and trustworthy health information on the Web? Some common sense goes a long way, of course. Consumers should make sure that the health information they find comes from a credible source, is dated, cites references, and links to other sources of credible information.
The Health On the Net (HON) Foundation is a Swiss non-governmental organization that promotes the deployment of useful and reliable online health information and expertise through quality assessment, and systematic and stringent peer review. HON provides accreditation for Web sites based on a code of conduct.
Kosmix uses a "categorization engine that crawls billions of Web pages in a unique manner to create algo-generated home pages" for every topic on the Web. Its RightHealth site promises that it "searches the whole health web and categorizes it for you into useful modules like Basic Facts, Images, Related Topics, Latest News and so on. From Arthritis to Zygomycosis, and everything in between, understanding your health just got easier." The company states:
At RightHealth our mission is to create the unofficial home page for every health related topic. The information you need is dispersed across the net and takes many forms. We take the best content on the web using our proprietary algorithms and categorization expertise and present it to you on a single page. Find exactly what you need or feel free to browse. Our philosophy is simple: to provide you with a comprehensive one-stop resource with high quality information and content for your health and well being.
This model leads us to consider what some are describing as Web 3.0. According to a recent article in the Guardian, "If [W]eb 2.0 could be summarised as interaction, [W]eb 3.0 must be about recommendation and personalisation." Others describe it as the Semantic Web, a "'decentralized asynchronous me,'" or being about "adding context to personalization." If these are accurate descriptives of the Web of the future, then Health 3.0 will not be far behind. We'd better start thinking about what personalized and contextualized health information might look like.