Glenton Claire, Paulsen Elizabeth J, Oxman Andrew D
Informed Choice Research Department, Norwegian Health Services Research Centre, Pb. 7004 St. Olavs Plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2005 Mar 15;5:7. doi: 10.1186/1472-6947-5-7.
The Internet offers a seemingly endless amount of health information of varying quality. Health portals, which provide entry points to quality-controlled collections of websites, have been hailed as a solution to this problem. The objective of this study is to assess the extent to which government-run health portals provide access to relevant, valid and understandable information about the effects of health care.
We selected eight clinically relevant questions for which there was a systematic review, searched four portals for answers, and compared the answers we found to the results of the systematic reviews.
Our searches resulted in 3400 hits, 155 of which mentioned both the condition and the intervention in one of the eight questions. Sixty-three of the 155 web pages did not give any information about the effect of the intervention. Seventy-seven qualitatively described the effects of the intervention. Twenty-six of these had information that was too unclear to be categorised; 15 were not consistent with the systematic review; and 36 were consistent with the review, but usually did not mention what happens without the intervention, what outcomes have been measured or when they were measured. Fifteen web pages quantitatively described effects. Four of these were abstracts from the systematic review, nine had information that was incomplete and potentially misleading because of a lack of information about people not receiving the intervention and the length of follow-up; one had information that was consistent with the review, but only referred to three trials whereas the review included six; and one was consistent with the review.
Information accessible through health portals is unlikely to be based on systematic reviews and is often unclear, incomplete and misleading. Portals are only as good as the websites they lead to. Investments in national health portals are unlikely to benefit consumers without investments in the production and maintenance of relevant, valid and understandable information to which the portals lead.
互联网提供了数量看似无穷、质量参差不齐的健康信息。健康门户网站作为进入经过质量控制的网站集合的入口，被誉为解决这一问题的方法。本研究的目的是评估政府运营的健康门户网站在多大程度上能够提供有关医疗保健效果的相关、有效且易懂的信息。
我们选择了八个有系统评价的临床相关问题，在四个门户网站上搜索答案，并将我们找到的答案与系统评价的结果进行比较。
我们的搜索产生了3400个结果，其中155个在八个问题之一中同时提及了病症和干预措施。155个网页中有63个未提供任何有关干预措施效果的信息。77个定性描述了干预措施的效果。其中26个的信息过于模糊，无法分类；15个与系统评价不一致；36个与评价一致，但通常未提及不进行干预会发生什么、测量了哪些结果或何时进行了测量。15个网页定量描述了效果。其中四个是系统评价的摘要，九个由于缺乏未接受干预的人群信息和随访时间而信息不完整且可能具有误导性；一个与评价一致，但仅提及三项试验，而评价纳入了六项；还有一个与评价一致。
通过健康门户网站获取的信息不太可能基于系统评价，且往往不清晰、不完整且具有误导性。门户网站的质量取决于它们所链接的网站。如果不投资于生产和维护门户网站所指向的相关、有效且易懂的信息，对国家健康门户网站的投资不太可能使消费者受益。
