How should clinicians engage with online health information?

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.