Quality of Web Information About Palliative Care on Websites from the United States and Japan: Comparative Evaluation Study

BACKGROUND: Patients and their families are able to obtain information about palliative care from websites easily nowadays. However, there are concerns on the accuracy of information on the Web and how up to date it is. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to elucidate problematic points of medical information about palliative care obtained from websites, and to compare the quality of the information between Japanese and US websites. METHODS: We searched Google Japan and Google USA for websites relating to palliative care. We then evaluated the top 50 websites from each search using the DISCERN and LIDA instruments. RESULTS: We found that Japanese websites were given a lower evaluation of reliability than US websites. In 3 LIDA instrument subcategories—engagability (P<.001), currency (P=.001), and content production procedure (P<.001)—US websites scored significantly higher and had large effect sizes. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that Japanese websites have problems with the frequency with which they are updated, their update procedures and policies, and the scrutiny process the evidence must undergo. Additionally, there was a weak association between search ranking and reliability, and simultaneously we found that reliability could not be assessed by search ranking alone.