Background: The consistency of treatment recommendations of evidence-based medical textbooks with more recently published evidence has not been investigated to date. Inconsistencies could affect the quality of medical care. Objective: To determine the frequency with which topics in leading online evidence-based medical textbooks report treatment recommendations consistent with more recently published research evidence. Methods: Summarized treatment recommendations in 200 clinical topics (ie,...

Background: Cannabis is the most widely used illicit substance, and multiple treatment options and avenues exist for managing its use. There has been an increase in the development of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) to improve standards of care in this area, many of which are disseminated online. However, little is known about the quality and accessibility of these online CPGs. Objective: The purpose of study 1 was to determine the extent to which cannabis-related CPGs disseminated online...

Background: It is now common practice for doctors to consult patients by means other than face-to-face, often appearing before the patient on a computer screen. Also, many websites are using depictions of health professionals to increase the credibility of their services. Being trustworthy is an essential attribute for successful ehealth services. Little is known about which depicted accessories make a health professional appear more trustworthy. Objective: To estimate the odds of an...

Background: Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease that affects approximately 1% of the US population. Disease is characterized by damage to the small intestinal lining and malabsorption of nutrients. Celiac disease is activated in genetically susceptible individuals by dietary exposure to gluten in wheat and gluten-like proteins in rye and barley. Symptoms are diverse and include gastrointestinal and extraintestinal manifestations. Treatment requires strict adherence to a gluten-free diet....

Background: Social media are becoming mainstream in the health domain. Despite the large volume of accurate and trustworthy health information available on social media platforms, finding good-quality health information can be difficult. Misleading health information can often be popular (eg, antivaccination videos) and therefore highly rated by general search engines. We believe that community wisdom about the quality of health information can be harnessed to help create tools for retrieving...

Background: The fact that patient satisfaction with primary care clinical practices and physician-patient communications has decreased gradually has brought a new opportunity to the online channel as a supplementary service to provide additional information. Objective: In this study, our objectives were to examine the process of cognitive knowledge expectation-confirmation from eHealth users and to recommend the attributes of a “knowledge-intensive website.”. Knowledge expectation...

Background: How do people decide which sites to use when seeking health advice online? We can assume, from related work in e-commerce, that general design factors known to affect trust in the site are important, but in this paper we also address the impact of factors specific to the health domain. Objective: The current study aimed to (1) assess the factorial structure of a general measure of Web trust, (2) model how the resultant factors predicted trust in, and readiness to act on, the...