Principles Governing AMA Web Sites

THE INTERNET HAS PERMITTED physicians, other health care professionals, patients, and other consumers to quickly access medical information in unprecedented volume. Such access has the potential to speed the transformation of the patient-physician relationship from that of physician authority ministering advice and treatment (with sometimes questionable patient understanding and adherence to recommendations) to that of shared decision making between patient and physician. However, several substantial barriers remain before this relationship can be realized. These barriers include equitable access to information, imbalance between patient health literacy and the information provided, extreme variability in the quality of the content, potential for commercial interests to influence content, and uncertain preservation of personal privacy. Web users have been warned regarding the incomplete, misleading, or inaccurate medical information available on the Web. For those seeking easy ways to identify high-quality, reliable information, some Web sites and organizations have provided rating systems to evaluate quality of information on the Internet. However, these systems often do not provide the criteria used to assess quality, nor do they provide the reliability and validity of their measures. Ultimately, assessing the quality of content depends on the same factors that readers of print publications depend on: authorship of the content, attribution to the sources of content, disclosure of funding and competing interests, and timeliness of the information presented. Among Internet users who seek medical information, personal privacy was ranked as their most important concern. A recent study found that while many Internet health information sites provide privacy policies, most do not follow them. More than nearly any other type of information provided via the Web, medical Web sites must adhere to strict personal privacy codes to prevent individuals’ personal medical information, including patterns of use and interests, from involuntarily entering the hands of marketers, employers, and insurers. Information from the American Medical Association (AMA), including the tables of contents and abstracts