An insight into rheumatology resources available on the World Wide Web

The aim of this study was to gain an overview of rheumatology resources on the World Wide Web (WWW). A list of websites was generated using a commercial search engine and 'rheumatology' as a key word. A total of 154 websites were then evaluated with respect to origin and likely target audience; 43% of this initial group were either not accessible, repeats, or in a language other than English. Of the 87 websites we were able to analyse, we found that 67% originated from medical organizations and 51% were interpreted to be directed specifically at rheumatologists. Only 16% of websites were directed at patients only. The remainder were felt to contain information useful to both groups. Over half the websites felt to be of interest to patients contained advertisements. Although there is a lot of information relating to rheumatology on the WWW, it was invariably time consuming to access and there was little directed solely at patient education.