Website Guidelines, Assessment Example

Problems Facing the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF.org)

1. A guideline that does not provide detailed information that might be more useful to other physicians and other healthcare people.
2. Absence of references in some sections, making the quality and accuracy in doubt and very difficult to ascertain.
3. Some sections of the best websites are not up to date with some last updated in 1999 and 2000.
4. Even though the quality is fairly highly rated, the depth and the scope of information are weak from the point of view of a healthcare provider.
5. Even though the site receives donations and sponsorships, there is no particular mention of the same on the site.
6. The site also does not reveal its authors in almost all cases.
7. The site does not reveal the role of the executive board as concerns review of sites or any such influences.
8. The site does not mention who maintains or is responsible for the accuracy, quality and reliability of the information presented in the site.
9. There is nothing on the site that reveals the up to date information or a way to analyze the information as it evolves over time.
10. Some links are also confusing making it difficult to navigate the site.
11. There is also continuous absence of balanced evidence and references throughout the NOF website.
12. Absence of detail is also major concern. The site seems to specialize too much on general information.
13. Absence of named authors affects greatly the reliability of the information.
14. Total absence of certain aspects of the information provided like the osteoporosis, no medication information is provided.
15. Inclusion of too much technical terms in some cases whilst the site claims to be focused on patients.

Possible Solutions

1. Improve on information detail and make the site more useful to physicians and health professionals as well (Kim, 1999).
2. Make an effort to reference all materials in the site, currently only figure and table are referenced.
3. They should be consistent in newsletter development and distribution. Their latest available newsletter is several years old.
4. They provide quality general information; however, they need to widen the scope and depth of their publications by providing diverse and in depth sources backed up by detailed citations (Hartfiled, May and Markoff, 1999).
5. As matter of ethical responsibility, the site should reveal its donors and the extent of their contributions.
6. Every article published on the site should be attributed to an author and their credentials indicated for the sake of reliability and trust.
7. Given that the site boasts of reputable board members, it is important that they indicate their overall role in the site’s content.
8. The site should also show the editorial authority behind the choice and publications of the articles on the site.
9. Navigation is the key to utilizing any web resource. Therefore, NOF site should improve on search and navigation especially in separating old articles from latest articles.
10. Failure to update the site is resulting in broken links. There are enough tools on the web that can be used to detect and remove no longer working links.
11. Most of the articles in this site refer to very minimal sources; there is a need to diversify and broaden their evidence.
12. Even though generalization is good for patients, in most cases it oversimplifies and indicates lack of depth (Elliot and Elliot, 2000).

References

Elliott B, Elliot G, High volume medical Web sites. Delaware Med. J 2000; 72 (l): 21-29.

Hatfield CL, May SK, Markoff JS. Quality of consumer drug information provided by four Websites. Am J Health SystPharm 1999; 56: 2308-11.

Kim P, Published criteria for evaluating health related Web sites: review BMJ 1999; 318: 647-49.