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Online consumer magazine rates health Web sites

Physician Practice Advisor, June 22, 2005

Health Web sites are rating and watching the medical field, but who is rating and watching them? Consumer Reports WebWatch, that's who.

Consumer Reports WebWatch, a grant-funded project of Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, partnered with the not-for-profit Health Improvement Institute, to look at 20 health Web sites critiquing them on credibility, privacy policies, ease of use, design, and advertising sponsorship.The health sites are ranked as excellent, very good, good and fair; none were rated poor.

"More guidelines and criteria for credibility have been set for health Web sites than any other type of site, and while that's a good thing, it's confusing for consumers to keep track, and difficult for health publishers to stay ahead," said Beau Brendler, director, Consumer Reports WebWatch in a press release. "These ratings provide consumers with independent evaluations of sites, and help them sort out which Web sites have their best interests at heart."

The 20 sites reviewed included: WebMD, Drugs.com, Healthology.com, National Institutes of Health, Aetna Intelihealth, iVillage Health, Yahoo! Health, Pfizer, MedScape, About Health and Fitness, RealAge, Heartcenteronline.com, Mayo Clinic, Kidshealth.org, Healthboards.com, Medicinenet.com, RxList, HealthSquare, EMedicine.com, and QualityHealth.

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