Information Science Department, College of Life Sciences, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Health Informatics Unit, Dasman Diabetes Institute, Kuwait City, Kuwait.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2022 May 9;22(1):126. doi: 10.1186/s12911-022-01868-9.
Nowadays, patients have access to all types of health information on the internet, influencing their decision-making process. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region consists of 22 countries with an estimated population of around 600 million. Breast cancer is the highest diagnosed cancer in this region. Websites are commonly the go-to cancer information sources. A large population of the MENA region is only fluent in the Arabic language, thus access to Arabic websites is in more demand. However, little is known about breast cancer websites that cater to an Arabic-speaking audience. This study aims at evaluating Arabic breast cancer websites and offering recommendations to improve engagement and access to health information.
This study employed a cross-sectional analysis approach. Google trends was used to reveal the top searched topics across the MENA region, which in turn were used as search terms to identify the websites. To be included, a website had to be active, available in Arabic, and contain breast cancer information. The evaluation was based on a combination of automated and expert-based evaluation methods through five dimensions: Availability, Accessibility, Readability, Quality, and Popularity.
Overall most of the websites performed poorly in the five dimensions and require careful reassessment concerning design, content, and readability levels; Only one website performed well in all dimensions, except for readability. Generally, the readability scores indicated that the websites were above the recommended level of reading. None of the websites passed the automated accessibility tests. The expert evaluation using the "Health on the Net" checklist showed good results for most websites.
Breast cancer rates are rising in the MENA region, therefore having comprehensive, accurate, trustworthy, and easy-to-understand health information in their native language is a must. The results from this study show a need for improving the accessibility to breast cancer information websites available to Arabic speakers. The search was limited to three search engines yielding 10 websites and only one tool was used per dimension. Future work is needed to overcome these limitations. Collaboration between multiple stakeholders is necessary to develop websites that contain easy-to-read and understand high-quality information.
如今，患者可以在互联网上获取各种类型的健康信息，这影响了他们的决策过程。中东和北非（MENA）地区由 22 个国家组成，估计人口约为 6 亿。乳腺癌是该地区发病率最高的癌症。网站通常是癌症信息的主要来源。MENA 地区的很大一部分人口只精通阿拉伯语，因此对阿拉伯语网站的需求更大。然而，对于迎合讲阿拉伯语受众的乳腺癌网站，人们知之甚少。本研究旨在评估面向阿拉伯语受众的乳腺癌网站，并提供改进参与度和获取健康信息的建议。
本研究采用了横断面分析方法。谷歌趋势（Google trends）被用来揭示 MENA 地区搜索最多的话题，这些话题反过来又被用作搜索词来识别网站。要被包括在内，网站必须是活跃的，可用阿拉伯语，并且包含乳腺癌信息。评估基于通过五个维度的自动和专家评估方法相结合：可用性、可及性、可读性、质量和流行度。
总体而言，大多数网站在五个维度上表现不佳，需要重新仔细评估设计、内容和可读性水平；只有一个网站在除可读性之外的所有维度上表现良好。一般来说，可读性得分表明网站的阅读水平高于推荐水平。没有一个网站通过自动化可访问性测试。使用“健康网络”检查表进行的专家评估显示，大多数网站的结果良好。
乳腺癌在 MENA 地区的发病率正在上升，因此，用母语提供全面、准确、可信且易于理解的健康信息是必要的。本研究的结果表明，需要改善面向讲阿拉伯语的人提供的乳腺癌信息网站的可及性。搜索仅限于三个搜索引擎，产生了 10 个网站，每个维度仅使用一个工具。需要进一步的工作来克服这些限制。需要多方利益相关者之间的合作，以开发包含易于阅读和理解的高质量信息的网站。
