There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Many adults, physicians, and medical students search the internet for health information.
Open access has many benefits, but the variable quality of internet health information-ranging
from evidence based to false-raises ethical concerns. Using Wikipedia as a case study,
this article argues that everyone engaging with internet health information has ethical
responsibilities. Those hosting and writing for health websites should ensure that
information is evidence based, accurate, up to date, and readable and be transparent
about conflicts of interest. Health care professionals, including medical students,
have both ethical responsibilities to help patients avoid false or misleading health
information and practical opportunities to improve the quality of internet health
information. All users of such information-professionals and patients alike-should
develop critical appraisal skills and apply them to internet health information to
distinguish the good from the junk.