Healthism differs from other health websites, like webmd.com, because it focuses on quality, not quantity, Ramsey says. All content on the site is reviewed by a medical advisory board to assure credibility, he says. Interactive quizzes help provide personalized information to visitors, who can build up health profiles by registering. Healthism differs from WebMD and similar sites in its intuitive, clean design as well, Ramsey says. “I have an obsession with user-centered design and the user experience.”

The site is visually appealing, with a simple navigation structure and useful tools such as a Target Heart Rate Calculator, Body Fat Calculator, and quizzes to test your “Preventive Health IQ.” To use the site, it requires registering and creating a profile, and you can even connect via Facebook.

Because of the nature of journalism (deadlines and the demand to produce), interviewing and taking the founder of such a website is at his/her word is usually good enough. But to evaluate whether the quality of such a site, it is necessary to dig deeper, and to apply two methods of evaluation: the CRAAP Test and the HON Code.

Developed by the Meriam Library at California State University Chico, the CRAAP test evaluates web content based on its:

• Currency: When was the information published/posted/last updated?
• Relevance: What is the importance of the information given your topic or information need?
• Authority: Who is the author/publisher/sponsor of the information?
• Accuracy: Is the information reliable, truthful, and correct?
• Purpose: Why does this information exist?

The Health on the Net Foundation’s “HON Code Certification” is “an ethical standard aimed at offering quality health information. It demonstrates the intent of a website to publish transparent information. The transparency of the website will improve the usefulness and objectivity of the information and the publishment of correct data.” As discussed in a previous post, it simply means a site will be transparent about its funding sources, privacy and advertising policies, author credentials, site’s sources, etc.

As of this writing, Healthism.com does not have HON Code certification. In addition, the “medical advisory board” mentioned in the VO article is not documented anywhere on the site. The privacy policy, while long, is fairly straightforward, but there is no mention of funding sources. And the few articles I sampled, and calculators I looked at, do not cite their sources for this information. So, with these shortcomings, it appears the best decision is to wait and see if this site improves its transparency and provides sources for its information before adding it as a linked resource on the website of a top-notch academic medical library website, such as the Eccles Library.

Serious journalists who would evaluate such sites would do well to know about these methods of evaluating online resources before interviewing the site’s founder.

Where do you being searching for medical information online — Google, Wikipedia, a medical site? What have you found to be a reliable source of health information online? Tell us about it!

One of the critical components of this policy is “The HON Code of Conduct for medical and health Web sites” from the Health On the Net Foundation. Our website is HON Code Certified, meaning that the content we offer is/shows:

1. Authoritative: indicating the quality (ex: credentials) of the author
2. Complementarity: information should support, not replace, the doctor-patient relationship.
3. Privacy: respect the privacy and confidentiality of personal data submitted to the site by the visitor.
4. Attribution: cite the source(s) of published information, date medical and health pages.
5. Justifiability: must back up claims relating to benefits and performance.
6. Transparency: provide accessible presentation, accurate email contact.
7. Financial disclosure: must identify funding sources.
8. Advertising policy: clearly distinguish advertising from editorial content.

As an example of how this process is implemented, I recently received a request to link to the following site via an email sent to our Director:

Our site (http://www.bestnursingdegree.com/) is listed as a web resource by the American Nurses Association and the American Hospital Association, and the New York Times highlighted us in November 2010 as a nursing career/education resource. I’m biased : ) but I do think it might be a useful addition.

A visit to this URL leads to a site that claims to have widespread approval by “organizations such as the American Nurses Association, the American Hospital Association, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, and the National Gerontological Nursing Association, among many others.” They also claim to have “given back to the nursing community by sponsoring over $12,000 in nursing student scholarships over the past two years.” It even claims to be a member of the American Library Association (ALA). The site is clearly organized and packed with useful information.

When compared to the HON Code Principles, however, this site falls short on several criteria. First, it barely meets the requirement for “Transparency,” only providing an email address as contact information, and nothing else.  A visit to the parent company’s website, Degree Prospects LLC, leads to a single web page with little information other than a generic email address, falling short in the “Authoritative” and “Financial Disclosure” categories. Finally, its so-called “Privacy Policy” can be changed at any time, and they reserve the right to sell assets, including any personal information provided by visitors. They claim that if personal information is sold, the Privacy Policy “shall remain in full force and effect and shall be binding” on those it is sold to. But any policy can be changed at any time by either the seller or the buyer, so privacy is fluid at best.

Should the library include a link to this site as a resource on our website, or not? What do you think? Tell us!