1997 Partnerships for Networked Consumer Health Information Conference

Summaries of Plenary Sessions and Breakout Sessions

Does It Work? #2: Quality: What Is It? How Do We Know? Who Is Responsible?

Wednesday, April 16, 1997
9:30-11:00 AM

Moderator: Helga E. Rippen, MD, PhD, Health Information Technology Institute, Mitretek

Speaker: John H. Renner, MD, President, Consumer Health Information Research Institute, "Criteria for Evaluating Consumer Health Web Site"

Speaker:Susan Alpert, MD, PhD, Director, Office of Device Evaluation, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Food and Drug Administration, "Quality Assessment in the Regulatory Environment"

Speaker:Kiyoshi Kuromiya, Founder and Director, Critical Path AIDS Project, "Assessing and Controlling Quality of Life: What Patients and Providers Look For"

Speaker:George D. Lundberg, MD, Editor, The Journal of the Medical Association, "Assuring the Quality of Health Information on the Internet"

Statement of the Subject

The number of people accessing the Internet has doubled over the last 18 months to 25 percent of the general public over the age of 16. With this explosive growth has to come an increase in demand for information; especially health related web sites. As a result, a vast amount of information is available to the health information consumer with no guarantee of quality. But what is quality and how can it be assessed?

This session addresses these questions through formal presentation and audience participation. Several standards for quality will be introduced. These will include: general Internet standards for health information (these will appear in JAMA); a set of criteria that can be used to evaluate site quality; Food and Drug Administration experiences related to design and implementation of Internet standards.

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