title: Brief report: development of a prescription medication information webliography for consumers.
abstract: 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.
  
  
  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 (http://home.anthemhealth.com/topic/drugcenter), U.S. National Library of Medicine (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html), and Healthvision (http://www.yourhealthinformation.com/library/healthguide/en-us/drugguide/default.htm).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ko
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Rowan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frost
authors.forename: Raymond L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Woosley
mesh_terms: D054598:Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance Plans; D004346:Drug Information Services / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D009317:National Library of Medicine (U.S.); D014481:United States