Muhammad Amin Chinoy, Asad Khan.
Internet information on Orthopedic Poliomyelitis: commercialization and lack of quality control.
Pak J Surg Jan ;22(4):227-30.

The effectiveness of the internet as a source of orthopaedic poliomyelitis information was analyzed. Six of the most commonly used search engines were utilized for searching for the key word ?poliomyelitis?. Matches were classified by information type, providers, relevance to medical professionals or to patients and commercial orientation. The websites contained 58% information aimed for use by physicians and other medical professionals, while 38% was related to patient information. Thirty eight percent of the web pages were provided by companies and 12% of the web pages were commercially oriented with specific information and advertisements relating to goods and services. Notably, the majority of websites contained advertisements pertaining to goods and services provided by companies. Hence, the World Wide Web has increasingly become a medium for commerce and advertisement and companies have become the leading source of information on the web. Specialized reference servers such as Pub Med and Med- line are the best source for the search of peer reviewed articles. There is an increasing need for establishment of consensus quality control criteria including authorship, attribution, disclosure and currency for internet healthcare publications and the regulation of medical information on the internet.

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