SynthesisBMC medical informatics and decision making2019
Who can you trust? A review of free online sources of "trustworthy" information about treatment effects for patients and the public.
Synthesis in BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Quality of information in news media reports about the effects of health interventions: Systematic review and meta-analyses.F1000Research · 2021Pooled it
- A Critical Health Literacy Podcast to Counter Health Misinformation at Scale: Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Trial
- Quality and readability of patient information on robotic-assisted hip arthroplasty.Annals of joint · 2026Article
- Promoting informed health choices: the long and winding road.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2025Article
- Critical thinking about health and treatments in the United States: a cross-sectional assessment of parents and undergraduate college students.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Piloting the informed health choices resources in Barcelona primary schools: A mixed methods study.PloS one · 2023Article
- Assessment of freely available online videos of cardiac electrophysiological procedures from a shared decision-making perspective.Cardiovascular digital health journal · 2022Article
- User testing of a Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network public guideline for the parents of children with autism.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Citizens Versus the Internet: Confronting Digital Challenges With Cognitive Tools.Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society · 2020Review
- Special Section on Ethics in Health Informatics.Yearbook of medical informatics · 2020Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundInformation about effects of treatments based on unsystematic reviews of research evidence may be misleading. However, finding trustworthy information about the effects of treatments based on systematic reviews, which is accessible to patients and the public can be difficult. The objectives of this study were to identify and evaluate free sources of health information for patients and the public that provide information about effects of treatments based on systematic reviews.
methodsWe reviewed websites that we and our colleagues knew of, searched for government sponsored health information websites, and searched for online sources of health information that provide evidence-based information. To be included in our review, a website had to be available in English, freely accessible, and intended for patients and the public. In addition, it had to have a broad scope, not limited to specific conditions or types of treatments. It had to include a description of how the information is prepared and the description had to include a statement about using systematic reviews. We compared the included websites by searching for information about the effects of eight treatments.
resultsThree websites met our inclusion criteria: Cochrane Evidence, Informed Health, and PubMed Health. The first two websites produce content, whereas PubMed Health aggregated content. A fourth website that met our inclusion criteria, CureFacts, was under development. Cochrane Evidence provides plain language summaries of Cochrane Reviews (i.e. summaries that are intended for patients and the public). They are translated to several other languages. No information besides treatment effects is provided. Informed Health provides information about treatment effects together with other information for a wide range of topics. PubMed Health was discontinued in October 2018. It included a large number of systematic reviews of treatment effects with plain language summaries for Cochrane Reviews and some other reviews. None of the three websites included links to ongoing trials, and information about treatment effects was not reported consistently on any of the websites.
conclusionIt is possible for patients and the public to access trustworthy information about the effects of treatments using the two of the websites included in this review.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.