Are you overwhelmed by proliferation of health information on the Web? Do you wish an authority would step forward and provide a convenient stamp of approval for web sites? Look no further. The Consumer and Patient Health Information Section (CAPHIS) of the Medical Library Association issued a list of the top ten most useful web sites for health consumers.
Sites were evaluated on credibility, sponsorship/authorship, content, audience, currency, disclosure, purpose, links, design, interactivity, and disclaimers.
The ten* that made the cut are:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- healthfinder®
- HealthWeb
- HIV InSite
- Mayo Clinic
- MEDEM: an information partnership of medical societies
- MEDLINEplus
- National Women's Health Information Center (NWHIC)
- NOAH: New York Online Access to Health
- Oncolink: A University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center Resource
The government continues to be a great source for health information and four of these sites have .gov domains. The remaining sites are split evenly among education (.edu), organization (.org) and commercial domains.