Patient-centered consumer health social network websites: a pilot study of quality of user-generated health information

AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2007 Oct 11:1137.

Abstract

The quality of user-generated health information on consumer health social networking websites has not been studied. We collected a set of postings related to Diabetes Mellitus Type I from three such sites and classified them based on accuracy, error type, and clinical significance of error. We found 48% of postings contained medical content, and 54% of these were either incomplete or contained errors. About 85% of the incomplete and erroneous messages were potentially clinically significant.

MeSH terms

  • Consumer Health Information / standards*
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination
  • Internet / standards*
  • Pilot Projects