How to Find Legitimate Medical Websites
Whether you are a student doing research for a paper, a writer composing an article, or a consumer looking for reliable medical information, it is important to be able to determine which websites are legitimate sources. There are many ways to find sites with content provided by credentialed medical professionals. For example, certain search methods can narrow your parameters for better results. Once you visit a site, it is also possible to pick up on certain cues that can help determine its viability.
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Instructions
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Search by Domain
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Click on "Advanced Search" on the options drop-down menu when performing a Yahoo search, or click the "Advanced" link on Ask.com. Choose .gov, .edu or .org to exclude commercial websites from your search. Google users can enter .com in the "unwanted words" field on the advanced search page to similarly narrow their searches, or add the phrase "site:.gov," "site:.org" or "site:.edu" (without the quotation marks) to their search terms. Click on the "U.S. Government" or "Google Scholar" links at the bottom of the Google advanced search page to home in on government or educational sites. Most search engines offer options to limit the domains of search results.
While not all sites with a domain ending in .com offer questionable information, omitting them from your search is an easy way to eliminate any doubt about whether the advice you find is biased or unreliable because the site is trying to sell something.
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Once you're on a site, click on the "About" or "About us" link to access information on the organization with which the site is affiliated. Evaluate the credentials of its content providers, whatever suffix is attached to the domain name. You can also usually discover a bit about the authors of individual articles in their bylines, where brief bios are often included.
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Check the medical information given for any signs of bias once you feel comfortable with the source. If you feel that the author is trying to sell something, whether a product or an ideology, think about checking with another source. Medical information should be verifiable via primary sources like research reports or other valid, reputable medical websites.
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Make sure the information is current. You can usually find the date on which a site was last updated near the bottom of the page, or via the date at the top of each article. Medical information changes frequently as technological advances and research discoveries are made, and medical websites should be revised accordingly. Many search engines offer the option of restricting your advanced search to websites that were updated within a specified time frame.
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Visit the Health On the Net Foundation site (see Resources) for an even more foolproof way to find credible medical websites. Here, you can access a vast array of medical sites that must meet a set of extremely high standards. The Health On the Net Foundation is an international group of experts in telemedicine, the practice of enhancing or delivering healthcare through telecommunications. You can browse all websites in the database, or customize your search using parameters such as gender, age group or disorder.
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