Health Information on the Internet: Gold nuggets or Lead dross?

According to a recent survey, the average American spends 52 hours each year scouring the Internet for health information. Who me? Is this a worthwhile activity? How reliable and helpful is Internet health information?

On the Quantified Health Blog, I tend to use Wikipedia a lot. And it is not just me, apparently even members of the medical profession take advantage of this resource:

"Despite these concerns, Wikipedia has become a popular source of health care information, 70% of physicians and medical students admitting to using it as a reference. In actuality, these figures may be higher because some researchers suspect its use is underreported."

What are the concerns about using Wikipedia as a health information source? A recent study examined the accuracy of Wikipedia articles on 10 common ailments by comparing to the original source material:

"For commonly identified assertions, there was statistically significant discordance between 9 of the 10 selected Wikipedia articles (coronary artery disease, lung cancer, major depressive disorder, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, back pain, and hyperlipidemia) and their corresponding peer-reviewed sources (P < .05) and for all assertions made by Wikipedia for these medical conditions (P < .05 for all 9)."

The authors of the study then concluded:

"Most Wikipedia articles representing the 10 most costly medical conditions in the United States contain many errors when checked against standard peer-reviewed sources. Caution should be used when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care."

Should you be disturbed? Not necessarily. In  most cases, >80% of the assertions on Wikipedia were supported by the literature. Furthermore it is not clear what a discordant assertion was in this study. It could mean a Wikipedia statement was directly contradicted by the literature, or it could be an assertion not fully supported by the literature i.e. the degree of wrongness was not quantified. In the future more careful and comprehensive studies need to be performed to assess Wikipedia's accuracy on health topics. Overall, I would consider Wikipedia to be a good but not perfect source of health information, and because it contains a significant number of errors, one should not use it as a substitute for visiting your doctor.

Of course there are other health websites on the Internet, and one strategy for separating the "signal" from the "noise" is to take advantage of multiple sources of information [link]:

"Despite the notion that people are passive recipients of health information on the Internet, regardless of its claim or source, many patients are also wary of the information they find online. Patients are often unsure about which websites to trust and are concerned about accessing potentially misleading or illegitimate health information on the Internet. For this reason, individuals often triangulate their sources in order to confirm facts or health suggestions."

Indeed, I have identified sources on the Internet that I consider to be quite reliable (and likely more reliable than Wikipedia). For example, there are the websites of WebMD, MedlinePlus and the Mayo Clinic, CDC, as well as disease-specific organizations like the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Cancer Society (ACS). If you are going to search the Internet, it is highly recommended visiting more than one site; it is like getting a second opinion. But I reiterate scouring the Internet is not a substitute for direct communication with a medical professional.

Figure 1. Health information on the Internet: Gold or Lead?