Making High-Quality Health Information More Visible – A Proposal for a Set of Criteria to Assess Information Provider Methods

The internet has become a primary source of health information, with over 50% of European Union citizens and 68-80% of U.S. adults searching for health information online. However, the quality of online health information varies greatly, and inaccurate, outdated, or misleading information is widespread. While existing guidelines like the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) and the German Good Practice Guidelines for Health Information (GPGI) aim to improve the quality of patient decision aids and health information, current efforts are insufficient to address the scale of low-quality information. Recent approaches include consumer education and resilience-building strategies, but these remain difficult to implement widely. This paper proposes criteria for evaluating the credibility of health information providers, focusing on structural and procedural quality, rather than comprehensive content assessment. These criteria, inspired by frameworks from IPDAS, GPGI, and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), emphasize transparency, evidence-based methodology, and the accountability of information sources. Implementing a certification and accreditation system based on these criteria could incentivize providers to adopt high standards, improve online health information quality, and ensure trustworthy content is prioritized by search engines, AI, and social media platforms.