[Assessing the quality of digital health services: How can informed decisions be promoted?]

An important prerequisite for the success of the digitisation of the healthcare system are risk-literate users. Risk literacy means the ability to weigh potential benefits and harms of digital technologies and information, to use digital services critically, and to understand statistical evidence. How do people find reliable and comprehensible health information on the Internet? How can they better assess the quality of algorithmic decision systems? This narrative contribution describes two approaches that show how the competence to make informed decisions can be promoted.Evidence-based and reliable health information exists on the Internet but must be distinguished from a large amount of unreliable information. Various institutions in the German-speaking world have therefore provided guidance to help laypersons make informed decisions. The Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Potsdam, for example, has developed a decision tree ("fast-and-frugal tree"). When dealing with algorithms, natural frequency trees (NFTs) can help to assess the quality and fairness of an algorithmic decision system.Independent of reliable and comprehensible digital health services, further tools for laypersons to assess information and algorithms should be developed and provided. These tools can also be included in institutional training programmes for the promotion of digital literacy. This would be an important step towards the success of digitisation in prevention and health promotion.