Quality assessment of online health information: a bibliographic analysis of the Brazilian academic production

Abstract

More and more users are turning to the Internet for health information. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the quality of the content made available online. Incomplete, incorrect, and incomprehensible health information circulates on the Internet and can jeopardize the well-being of individuals. Different initiatives have been developed to deal with the quality issue, one of them being the evaluation of the quality of online health information. In this scenario, the present article presents the characteristics of the Brazilian academic production on the matter, specifically the methods used to assess the accuracy of the content. We conducted a bibliographic analysis, and we identified that the concern with the dimension
of accuracy of online information is present among most authors. However, it is worth mentioning that this evaluation process uses expert consensus and bibliographic materials as references. The use of these resources has limitations, since they may be outdated in relation to the best and most current scientific evidence. In this sense, it is essential that future research on the evaluation of the accuracy of online health information adopt the summarized summaries of clinical information as a reference.