Abstract

Web health information resources have the potential to educate and empower consumers, by providing information on the nature of their health problems. However, poor quality information may have detrimental effects on health as consumers typically do not have clinical training and may not be able to judge the quality of web health information resources. A variety of tools and resources are available to help consumers’ access websites with good quality information, but there is a lack of evidence of their usefulness for general consumer use. The purpose of this review was to critically appraise existing web health evaluation tools to assess their content and to recommend a tool that is best suited for general consumer use. The structured review confirmed that the existing web health evaluation tools do not meet the criteria for readability and ease of use for general consumers. A customized tool/quality checklist that was designed for general consumer use was based on the core consensus criteria. This tool is recommended to support consumers in their use of quality web-based health information.