Evaluation of the quality of 52 health-related websites, created with wiki technology

The emergence of Web 2.0 philosophy of using Internet as a platform generated by all Internet users could have many implications for the future of healthcare. While application of the Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis, blogs, podcast and social networks to medicine and healthcare has definitely many benefits (e.g. to develop communication in healthcare and education), there is a growing concern about the quality of the sources of information built using these tools. According to general philosophy of the web 2.0 every Internet user could be the author of Internet’s content. Such a practice could be especially dangerous in case of sources of health related information, where the reliability and accuracy are especially crucial, because there is to much risk to harm the patient if inaccurate and misleading information was posted. The aim of the following study was to assess the quality of the sources of information, built with wiki technology (which is one of the web 2.0 applications).

The emergence of Web 2.0 philosophy of using Internet as a platform generated by all Internet users could have many implications for the future of healthcare. While application of the Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis, blogs, podcast and social networks to medicine and healthcare has definitely many benefits (e.g. to develop communication in healthcare and education), there is a growing concern about the quality of the sources of information built using these tools. According to general philosophy of the web 2.0 every Internet user could be the author of Internet’s content. Such a practice could be especially dangerous in case of sources of health related information, where the reliability and accuracy are especially crucial, because there is to much risk to harm the patient if inaccurate and misleading information was posted. The aim of the following study was to assess the quality of the sources of information, built with wiki technology (which is one of the web 2.0 applications).