Evaluation of Consumer Health Web Sites
Dr. Yuri Quintana (University of Western Ontario)
Abstract
A review of existing evaluation methods for consumer health web sites is given. A new criteria evaluation list was developed based on the previous studies and from consumer feedback and interviews. This new evaluation criteria was then applied to leading consumer web sites. A reliability test of this evaluation criteria was was done with multiple observers. The effectiveness and reliability of this evaluation criteria is discussed. Suggestions are made for future use of such evaluations by search engines to help give high quality sites a higher ranking on search result lists.
About Dr. Yuri Quintana
Dr. Yuri Quintana is a faculty member at The University of Western Ontario in the faculty of Information and Media Studies. He teaches in the Masters and Doctoral programs in Library and Information Science. Dr. Quintana is a computer engineer with an interest in human factors in consumer computing applications. His research is focusing in digital libraries, interactive media and consumer health information systems. He is currently studying how the Internet is being used by breast cancer patients, digital multimedia storytelling techniques and interactive medical education. Dr. Quintana is also developing advanced methods to index, filter and retrieve medical information f rom the Internet with funding from the HealNet Federal Center of Excellence in Evidence-based Health Information. Dr. Quintana is also working on advanced interactive technologies to index, browse and retrieve art images in digital museum applications with funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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