Evaluation of Health Information on the Web

Wikipedia is often a good place to start your research, even if it is not considered a reputable source to use as a reference or as an authority on health topics. The following 2:44 minute video introduces some helpful strategies for getting the most out of this source. 

There is a lot of discussion on whether Wikipedia is a reliable place to find health information, with the largest concern being anyone can edit the information on the website. Here are a number of sources that discuss the pros and cons: 

• Improving the quality of consumer health information on Wikipedia: Case series (Weiner et al., 2019)
• Lexicomp provides more comprehensive drug information than Wikipedia in small sample comparison (Alcock, 2019)
• Situating Wikipedia as a health information source in various contexts: A scoping review (Smith, 2020)
• Reader engagement with medical content on Wikipedia (Maggio et al., 2020)
• Wikipedia in health professional schools: From opponent to an ally (Mendes et al., 2021)
• Health on Wikipedia: A qualitative study of the attitudes, perceptions, and use of Wikipedia as a source of health information by middle-aged and older adults (Huisman et al., 2021) 
• Readability of English, German, and Russian disease-related Wikipedia pages: Automated computation analysis (Gordejeva et al., 2022) 
• Health information on Wikipedia: Can you trust it? (Epstein, 2022)