Abstract
Aim:
To evaluate quality of websites containing health information about heart attack in the Swedish language, accessible via one common used search engine available to the general public.
Background:
Increasingly, information about different health problems is sought on the Internet. From a layman perspective, such information can be hard to find, to understand and to trust. Health care professionals should be able to inform and teach the individual safe ways of finding health information of good quality on the Internet, which involves assessments of the websites.
Methods:
In one common used search engine, the Google, one search was performed during February 2006. Seventy websites were evaluated using one or all the European Union (EU) quality criteria.
Findings:
No website met all the criteria, but websites found on the search engines first search pages, met the criteria in the best way. Those websites were primarily aimed at mediating health information to the general public provided by government authorities, county councils, universities and companies.
Conclusions:
Ethnic minority groups, and individuals with low literacy skills/or visual impairments, may have difficulties finding suitable information. The EU quality criteria need to be refined in order to better assess the quality on different kind of websites.