Health On the Net (HON) Foundation, the non-profit organization that oversees the HONcode, the oldest and most widely used ethical and trustworthy code for medical- and health-related information on the Internet, recently launched a new and improved certificate for medical and health web sites [1]. The new certificate is an initiative to further enhance the HONcode certification system and to encourage health and medical information seekers to be more critical when searching for information online. It is also intended to advance the ethical use and promotion of health and medical data among online information providers.
Health Highlights – May 6th, 2008
May 6, 2008 | by
Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.
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One Hand Clapping | Science-based Medicine
Mark Crislip ponders the meaning of “better” and explores objective and subjective therapeutic responses. A must read!
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Trusted doesn’t mean accurate. Safe is almost certainly stale. | e-patients
How do you know if you can trust medical information from a website? Did you know the guidelines used to determine "trusted" websites were all conceived between 1995 and 1999, when information available was entirely static (think pre-Health 2.0).
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Does your diet determine what sex your baby will be? | Doctor David’s Blog
Dr. David discusses an Oxford study suggesting that sex determination may be more complicated than sperm with an X or Y chromosome.
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My take: Just say no to unnecessary tests | Kevin, M.D.
Kevin believes that excessive testing, combined with demand for the latest diagnostic modalities, play a pivotal role in increasing healthcare costs and suggests we say no to unnecessary tests.
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Healthy, frugal eating | Wise Bread
Wise Bread describes how to eat and suggests we recreate a tradition of healthy, frugal eating.
Searching for Health Information Online Dangerous
February 22, 2008 | by
Approximately eight million Americans search for health information online every day [1]. However, the information those health seekers are reading may not be very healthy at all. A new study by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest recently reported that the information prominently displayed in search engine results was not only misleading and confusing, but dangerous for patients [2]. Case in point: using two safe and effective prescription medications (Crestor and Avandia) as an example, nearly 65% of the first three pages of Google search results came from sites that were biased or contained unverified information. Add to this the fact that most search engine users click on a result within the first three pages of search results [3] and people searching for health information online are likely to be viewing websites that aren’t credible or trustworthy.
