title: A systematic review of patient inflammatory bowel disease information resources on the World Wide Web.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Internet is a widely used information resource for patients with inflammatory bowel disease, but there is variation in the quality of Web sites that have patient information regarding Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The purpose of the current study is to systematically evaluate the quality of these Web sites.
  
  
  METHODS
  The top 50 Web sites appearing in Google using the terms "Crohn's disease" or "ulcerative colitis" were included in the study. Web sites were evaluated using a (a) Quality Evaluation Instrument (QEI) that awarded Web sites points (0-107) for specific information on various aspects of inflammatory bowel disease, (b) a five-point Global Quality Score (GQS), (c) two reading grade level scores, and (d) a six-point integrity score.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirty-four Web sites met the inclusion criteria, 16 Web sites were excluded because they were portals or non-IBD oriented. The median QEI score was 57 with five Web sites scoring higher than 75 points. The median Global Quality Score was 2.0 with five Web sites achieving scores of 4 or 5. The average reading grade level score was 11.2. The median integrity score was 3.0.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There is marked variation in the quality of the Web sites containing information on Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Many Web sites suffered from poor quality but there were five high-scoring Web sites.
authors.affiliation: Division of Anesthesiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bernard
authors.forename: Morgan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Langille
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.forename: Caren
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rose
authors.forename: Desmond
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Leddin
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Veldhuyzen van Zanten
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D015212:Inflammatory Bowel Diseases; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet