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News > Evaluating the quality of health information

LIDA appraisal tool

12 January 2006, 23:17
News > Evaluating the quality of health information

We know that providing reliable health information is expensive. To do it properly, we have to conduct a thorough needs analysis, comprehensive literature searching and rigorous critical appraisal of sources. We also need to recruit suitably qualified authors and review the content they produce.

Many public sector organisations do not as yet have the resources or the strategic vision to implement such an approach. Intuitively, it would make sense that the pharmaceutical industry, which already funds the majority of health care research, could make a significant contribution. This is the view of the ABPI (Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry ), who recently called for greater involvement: "We should be allowed to join in the provision of information from which, at the moment, we are the only people excluded!" However, would this provide a back door to Direct-to-Consumer advertising?

In developing UK Prostate Link, we assessed a variety of commercial and non-commercial web sites. It was interesting to examine http://www.prostate.com/ and http://www.casodex.com/, both of which are funded by pharmaceutical companies which provide hormone therapy treatments for prostate cancer. Our critical appraisal of the information revealed the use of design to spin the message: none of the information is wrong as such (much of it is very useful indeed), it is just presented in such a way as to emphasise the side-effects of "competitor" treatments and play down the side-effects of hormone therapy.

So, there may be no reason in principle why pharmas shouldn't help out with providing health information to those who need it. However, they must ensure that the information is independently produced and stands up to critical assessment using instruments such as Minervation's LIDA tool.