Judge: web sites for health - consumer guidelines - how to judge

	2.0 How to judge:

		2.1 Trust and reputation 2.2 Who produced the site 2.3 Purpose of the site 2.4 Funding sources 2.5 Date 2.6 How the information is written 2.7 Descriptions of conditions and treatments 2.8 Medical research 2.9 Personal experiences 2.10 Foreign sites 2.11 Communication 2.12 Links 2.13 Disclaimers 2.14 Kitemarks 2.15 Design 2.16 Interactive facilities 2.17 Other quality guidelines

2.9 Personal experiences

Personal experiences are important sources of help and information. They can appear as sections in a support group site. They can be the purpose for an individual patient or carer setting up their own Web site.

Personal experiences should be clearly marked as such.

You should be cautious about individual patient or carer sites, particularly where they give medical information. Check the accuracy of that information carefully.

See if the description of their personal experience matches with yours.

See how they deal with a fact, particularly a controversial one, where you know the correct answer.

See if they give references to the sources of the medical information they provide.

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© Copyright for this site is held by Contact a Family and the Information Society Research and Consultancy Group, School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences, Northumbria University. Site published February 2003. Last updated October 2006. Review date October 2007.