Use of health-related online sites

This report offers recommendations to physicians who provide information or services through online sites. The recommendations maintain that physicians responsible for health-related information should ensure that it is accurate, timely, reliable, and scientifically sound. Also, advice to the online users with whom physicians do not have pre-existing relationships or the use of decision-support programs that generate personalized information directly transmitted to users should be consistent with general and specialty-specific standards. In particular, these standards address truthfulness, protection of privacy, informed consent, and disclosures including limitations inherent in the technology. Finally, physicians who establish or are involved in health-related online sites must minimize conflicts of interest and commercial biases and, if patient specific information is transmitted, they must provide high-level security protections, as well as privacy and confidentiality safeguards.