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

BACKGROUND: 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. OBJECTIVE: To establish a webliography of recommended prescription medication information websites for health care consumers and providers. DESIGN AND METHODS: 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. RESULTS: Ten websites were selected for inclusion in the webliography. The 3 highest-scoring websites were Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield (), U.S. National Library of Medicine (), and Healthvision (). CONCLUSION: 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.