Assessment strategies: how patients cope with the diverse quality levels of websites when searching for health information.

The quality of online medical information available for patients has long been a concern of health care professionals. [1-4] Although initiatives exist for patients to use when searching for information, there is the concern that these initiatives are either ineffective or even counter-productive. [5-6] Another criticism is that initiatives do not sufficiently achieve their respective goals. [7-8] It is important to consider that many initiatives have been designed with patients in mind, but not with patients involved. Various portals, seals, rating systems, ethical codes, etc., exist ostensibly for patients, but arose largely without concrete input from real patients-as-end-users. Literature addressing usability on the basis of studies assessing real patients' searching behaviors appeared only in 2002. [9-11] The conclusions from these studies, while insightful, reflect the need for ongoing research into the daily practices of patients searching for web-based health care information. This poster highlights the first results of a systematic ethnographic study (interviews and shadow-searching carried out between November, 2001 and August, 2003) to determine how patients approach health care information when searching on the internet and illustrates the different strategies that patients use to assess the health information they encounter on the web.