Citation, abstract and comment from me below.
CITATION: J Health Commun. 2026 Apr 27. 1-5
Making High-Quality Health Information More Visible - A Proposal for a Set of Criteria to Assess Information Provider Methods.
Corinna Schaefer, Klaus Koch, Roland Büchter, Sebastian Schmidt-Kaehler, Inga Münch, Joseph L Mathew.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2026.2663933
ABSTRACT
The internet has become a primary source of health information, with over 50% of European Union citizens and 68-80% of U.S. adults searching for health information online. However, the quality of online health information varies greatly, and inaccurate, outdated, or misleading information is widespread. While existing guidelines like the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) and the German Good Practice Guidelines for Health Information (GPGI) aim to improve the quality of patient decision aids and health information, current efforts are insufficient to address the scale of low-quality information. Recent approaches include consumer education and resilience-building strategies, but these remain difficult to implement widely. This paper proposes criteria for evaluating the credibility of health information providers, focusing on structural and procedural quality, rather than comprehensive content assessment. These criteria, inspired by frameworks from IPDAS, GPGI, and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), emphasize transparency, evidence-based methodology, and the accountability of information sources. Implementing a certification and accreditation system based on these criteria could incentivize providers to adopt high standards, improve online health information quality, and ensure trustworthy content is prioritized by search engines, AI, and social media platforms.
COMMENT (NPW)
Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall so most of us are unable to read the full text. The approach sounds very similar to the former Health on the Net Foundation (HoN), which pioneered evaluation of content development processes as a way of assessing quality. HoN was sadly discontinued a few years ago due to lack of funding - an indictment of the lack of financial commitment for universal access to reliable healthcare information.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org