This accounted for 68 percent of the 88 million people using the Internet in the last 12 months. The majority of these respondents reported searching for health care information related to a particular disease or medical condition. The Internet is supplying access to a virtual community of health support groups and health information providers never before available. Although the volume of health information available on the Internet is without dispute, the quality of much of the information is questionable. One of the advantages of web based education is that tools are being created that make it easy to convert language to be better matched to the desired client preferences.
Hyperlinks can quickly take the user to similar pages that are customized to their preferences.
Victor Strecher and his associates have been working on this issue for several years. If you have a budget to help with content creation there are services that can assist you with content development. Professionals must begin to do a better job of teaching individuals how to evaluate the appropriateness of information that they find on the Internet. One must first decide if the author, or authors are qualified to offer health related information. Virtually anyone can publish a Web page, but that does not assure that everyone has the specialized training necessary for the responsible communication of health information.