Brief report: development of a prescription medication information webliography for consumers

Websites offering drug information vary in coverage and quality, and most health care consumers are poorly equipped to assess the quality of internet medication information.

To establish a webliography of recommended prescription medication information websites for health care consumers and providers.

Drug information websites were systematically identified based on recommendations from health professionals and text-word searches of MEDLINE and Google. The resulting sample of websites was evaluated in a 2-step process. Candidate websites were first screened using inclusion/exclusion criteria representing minimum information requirements. Websites that passed the inclusion/exclusion criteria were then rated on 16 quality criteria using a 5-point scale by 3 trained judges. Website ratings were averaged, then multiplied by the corresponding importance weight of each criterion and summed to generate a total score. Websites with the highest total scores were included in the webliography.

Ten websites were selected for inclusion in the webliography. The 3 highest-scoring websites were Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield (http://home.anthemhealth.com/topic/drugcenter), U.S. National Library of Medicine (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html), and Healthvision (http://www.yourhealthinformation.com/library/healthguide/en-us/drugguide/default.htm).

Medication information websites vary widely in quality and content. The online webliography is a valuable and easily accessed tool that can be recommended by health care professionals to patients who request referral to reliable websites.