Bohacek L, Gomez M, Fish J S
Ross tilley Burn Centre, Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
J Burn Care Rehabil. 2003 Jul-Aug;24(4):246-51; discussion 245. doi: 10.1097/01.BCR.0000075844.04297.D9.
Patients rely on the Internet for medical information. It is difficult to discern which resources are accurate or appropriate for patients. The purpose of this study was to develop a quality-assessment tool for health Internet Web sites and to apply this tool to assess the quality of burn scar management information on the Internet. Between September and December 2001, we prospectively evaluated all Web sites on the Internet search engine Yahoo! containing the headings "burn scar management," "burn scar healing," "burn scar treatment," and "burn scar therapy." The quality of each Web site's medical information was evaluated using our scoring system consisting of the following two components: quality and technical characteristics. The total score for each Web site was converted to a percent grade (eg, > or =80% = excellent, 70 to 79% = very good, 60 to 69% = good, 50 to 59% = fair, and <50% = poor). The Web sites were grouped into three categories: commercial (for profit), academic (university, hospital), and organizational (nonprofit). Of 88 Web sites evaluated, the majority 68 (77%) were commercial, 7 (8%) academic, and 13 (15%) organizational. Burn scar management information on the Internet was poor in the majority (79%) of commercial Web sites and was excellent, very good, or good in the majority of academic (86%) and organizational (77%) Web sites. Using our health information evaluation, we found that the majority of burn scar management information on the internet (77%) was of fair or poor quality. Academic and organizational Web sites had the best quality of burn scar management information. Additional testing of the developed tool will be needed to analyze the reproducibility of the results and their applicability in other medical domains.
患者依靠互联网获取医学信息。很难辨别哪些资源对患者来说是准确或合适的。本研究的目的是开发一种针对健康互联网网站的质量评估工具，并应用该工具评估互联网上烧伤瘢痕管理信息的质量。在2001年9月至12月期间，我们前瞻性地评估了互联网搜索引擎雅虎上所有包含“烧伤瘢痕管理”“烧伤瘢痕愈合”“烧伤瘢痕治疗”和“烧伤瘢痕疗法”等标题的网站。每个网站的医学信息质量使用我们的评分系统进行评估，该系统由以下两个部分组成：质量和技术特征。每个网站的总分转换为百分比等级（例如，≥80% = 优秀，70%至79% = 非常好，60%至69% = 好，50%至59% = 一般，<50% = 差）。这些网站分为三类：商业（盈利性）、学术（大学、医院）和组织（非营利性）。在评估的88个网站中，大多数68个（77%）是商业网站，7个（8%）是学术网站，13个（15%）是组织网站。互联网上烧伤瘢痕管理信息在大多数（79%）商业网站中质量较差，而在大多数学术（86%）和组织（77%）网站中为优秀、非常好或好。通过我们的健康信息评估，我们发现互联网上大多数（77%）烧伤瘢痕管理信息质量一般或较差。学术和组织网站的烧伤瘢痕管理信息质量最佳。需要对开发的工具进行进一步测试，以分析结果的可重复性及其在其他医学领域的适用性。
