Health On the Net Foundation (HON)

Citation

(2001), "Health On the Net Foundation (HON)", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 14 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2001.06214fag.001

Health On the Net Foundation (HON)

Health On the Net Foundation (HON) http//www.hon.ch

The origins of this site go back to a conference, The Use of the Internet and World-Wide Web for Telematics in Healthcare held in 1995. At the end of’the conference the 60 participants from 11 countries voted to create a permanent body that would, in the words of the programme, "promote the effective and reliable use of the new technologies for telemedicine in healthcare around the world". HON's site went live some six months later. The site is available in both French and English.

Health on the Net is a Swiss foundation, operating out of Geneva with the support of local Geneva authorities. It co-operates closely with the University Hospitals of Geneva and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and has council and Webteam members from several European countries and the USA.

The site offers, amongst other things, two medical search tools, MedHunt and HONselect. MedHunt consists of an intelligent and specialised search engine designed to locate Internet information related to a given medical and health domain; HONselect, is an assisted-search facility, offering 33,000 terms from which to select, that integrates heterogeneous databases to offer users a full assortment of healthcare information and resources available on the Web. It also has a code of conduct, HON Code of Conduct for the provision of authoritative, trustworthy Web-based medical information. The code has eight ethical management principles for healthcare Web site developers:

1. 1.

   Authority. Any medical or health advice provided and hosted on this site will only be given by medically trained and qualified professionals unless a clear statement is made that a piece of advice offered is from a non-medically qualified individual or organisation.

2. 2.

   Complementarity. The information provided on this site is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her existing physician.

3. 3.

   Confidentiality. Confidentiality of data relating to individual patients and visitors to a medical/health Web site, including their identity, is respected by this Web site. The Web site owners undertake to honour or exceed the legal requirements of medical/health information privacy that apply in the country and state where the Web site and mirror sites are located.

4. 4.

   Attribution. Where appropriate, information contained on this site will be supported by clear references to source data and, where possible, have specific HTML links to that data. The date when a clinical page was last modified will be clearly displayed (e.g. at the bottom of the page).

5. 5.

   Justifiability. Any claims relating to the benefits/performance of a specific treatment, commercial product or service will be supported by appropriate, balanced evidence in the manner outlined above in principle 4.

6. 6.

   Transparency of authorship. The designers of this Web site will seek to provide information in the clearest possible manner and provide contact addresses for visitors that seek further information or support. The Webmaster will display his/her e-mail address clearly throughout the Web site.

7. 7.

   Transparency of sponsorship. Support for this Web site will be clearly identified, including the identities of commercial and non-commercial organisations that have contributed funding, services or material for the site.

8. 8.

   Honesty in advertising and editorial policy. If advertising is a source of funding it will be clearly stated. A brief description of the advertising policy adopted by the Web site owners will be displayed on the site. Advertising and other promotional material will be presented to viewers in a manner and context that facilitates differentiation between it and the original material created by the institution operating the site.

As far as could be judged, the site certainly adheres to these principles.

In addition to the search engines, the site offers a Multimedia centre: HONmedia. This provides access to over 2,000 illustrations on 1,400 topics selected by HON from various sources. Navigation through this section is rather cumbersome. It involves first selecting from ten major categories, such as anatomy, organisms, and diseases. Second, there is a choice of subcategory – for example the category diseases offers 21 subcategories – and finally a choice of particular term, such as aneurysm or angina pectoris. Each of the choices is made from a menu, with a box labelled "go" which invites you to click when you have made your selection. However, when using Internet Explorer, clicking on "go" seems to create some confusion. It is sufficient to make your selection. The next stage then starts automatically. Selection through the three stages leads to thumbnail pictures of whatever has been selected. For example, following through Stage’1: diseases; Stage 2: cardiovascular diseases; Stage 3: aortic aneurysm, leads to two pictures, one from the University of Wisconsin and an animated one from Tokyo Medical University. Clicking on the pictures takes you to the host Web site. Additionally, beneath the pictures is an optional link to other Web resources, such as definitions, articles, conferences, and Web pages, which can be accessed through the search engine HONselect.

An interesting feature of the site is that HON carries out periodic surveys to help to monitor the growing trend towards electronic processing, publication, dissemination and use of medical and health-related information, and improve understanding of the usage of the Internet for medical purposes. Health On the Net Foundation hope that the results of these surveys will help HON and other medical Web sites meet the needs of the Net community more effectively. The surveys have been conducted at least one per year since 1997, and as well as providing the results and summaries, the site provides the raw data so that users can carry out their own analyses.

The surveys are conducted via the Web site, with participants responding to questionnaires posted on the site. Each questionnaire remains live on the site for two months.

Other features offered by the site are free and unlimited access to MEDLINE from the National Library of Medicine, USA; HON Dossier, a series of glossaries on Mother and Child, Hepatitis B Allergy, Rare Diseases, Vision and Eye care, Ageing and Stopping smoking; links to conference information, and a new service.