title: Web-site evaluation tools: a case study in reproductive health information.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Internet forms an opportunity to inform, teach, and connect professionals and patients. However, much information on Internet is incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading, and not only in the medical domain. Because of the potential for damage from misleading and inaccurate health information, many organizations and individuals have published or implemented scoring tools for evaluating the appropriateness or quality of these resources. The objective of this study is to identify and summarize scoring tools that have evaluated web-sites providing reproductive health information in order to compare them and recommend an overarching evaluation tool.
  
  
  METHODS
  We searched Ovid MEDLINE(R) (1946 to July 2013) and OVID Embase (1980 to July 2013); and included English language studies that have evaluated the quality of websites providing reproductive health information. Studies only assessing the content of websites were excluded.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified 5 scoring tools: 1-The HON (health on the net) Code of Conduct for medical and health Web sites, 2-Silberg scores, 3-Hogne Sandvik scale, 4-Jim Kapoun's Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages, and 5-The Health Information Technology Institute (HITI) criteria. We have compared these scales and identified 14 criteria: authorship, ownership, currency, objectivity/content, transparency/source, interactivity, privacy/ethics, financial disclosure, navigability/links, complementarity, advertising policy, design, quantity, and accessibility. We integrated these criteria and introduced a new tool with 10 criteria.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Website evaluation tools differ in their evaluation criteria and there is a lack of consensus about which to use; therefore, an integrated easy to use set of criteria is needed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Azam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aslani
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Omid
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Pournik
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ameen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Abu-Hanna
authors.affiliation: Pharmaceutical Research Center, School of Pharmacy, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Saeid
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eslami
mesh_terms: D054626:Consumer Health Information / Q000592:standards*; D062527:Meaningful Use; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D060728:Reproductive Health / Q000592:standards*; D061108:Social Media / Q000592:standards*; D012984:Software