The BMJ of the 9th March is devoted to health information on the Internet. Most of the articles focus on the issue relating to the quality oh health information on the Web. One article by Pandolfini and Bonati concludes that health information on the Web has improved over the past four tears, whilst another article by Kunst argues that credible Web sites do not necessarily provide higher levels of accurate health information.

It seems fair to say that the debate about the quality of information on the Web is not yet over.

EuroScore
http://euroscore.org/patient.htm

EuroSCORE - the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation - is a method of predicting the chances of dying during or shortly after undergoing heart surgery.

Although the tool was designed for doctors to work out how risky a heart operation is, EuroSCORE also gives patients an idea of the likely risk. This information is useful in guiding your doctor whether to advise you to have surgery.

The site walks you through a series of questions - have you had a stroke, have you had surgery before etc - and then calculates your chances of surviving heart surgery.

Obviously, this site should be used with caution, and the results discussed with your doctor.

Hi-Quality
http://www.hiquality.org.uk/

Hi Quality, aims to raise quality standards for health information. With funding from the Department of Health, Hi Quality Hi Quality is a direct response to NHS commitment to improve the quality of information for patients. It is based on the Centre for Health Information Quality (ChiQ) three principles, that information should be accurate, clear and relevant.

Sites that comply with these principles will be able to display a new "triangle-mark" that the developer's hope will become analogous to the BS5750 kite mark.

Although a laudable aim, this represents yet another attempt to introduce a new "quality-assured" badge to go alongside those developed by the Health on the Net Foundation http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html, the HiEthics Consortium http://www.hiethics.com/ and MedCertain http://www.medcertain.org/.

As of March 2002, this author could find no sites that were displaying the new triangle mark.


Robert Kiley - 20 March 2002