Medline Plus and Himalaya Herbal Essays

Medline Plus and Himalaya Herbal Essays Medline Plus and Himalaya Herbal Essay Medline Plus and Himalaya Herbal Essay In this paper, we studied three different websites which presented information on hypertension. These included Wikipedia, Medline Plus and Himalaya Herbal. Wikipedia is a voluntary organization that contains content prepared and edited by the online users, and validated to some extent by the employees of Wikipedia. Medline Plus is a government-owned organization that presents evidence-based health information for the users. Himalaya Herbal is an Indian herbal manufacturer that provides health information with the basic idea of promoting its own products. The Wikipedia website presented information on hypertension, the incidences of hypertension, causes and risk factors, signs and symptoms, diagnosis, prevention, treatment and the prognosis of the same. The website also presented links to references. However, the identity and the qualifications of the authors were not mentioned on the website. The information presented was generic and all treatment products were not given brand names. Wikipedia did not try to promote any kind of treatment drug or method of any company. However, as the information could be edited by the users and the currency of the information was not mentioned, the validity and reliability of information presented on the Wikipedia website was poor. There were no advertisements on the website. The reliability of Wikipedia publishing evidence-based health information does not seem good and hence there are greater chances of biases. The Medline Plus Website presented information on the disease, incidences, causes, pathophysiology, risk factors, signs, symptoms, diagnosing methods, treatment, lifestyle changes, prognosis and complications. The data of creation of the web page, date of updating, name of the author, credentials of the author, reference list, privacy policy, etc was being mentioned. Users were given an email id for asking queries. It seemed to fulfill the criteria mentioned under HONCODE and hence the information presented was valid and reliable. There were no advertisements on the website. Medline Plus is a reputed source, trying to minimize any kind of biases. Further the information met all the essentials of the search strategy. Himalaya Herbal presented just basic information on the description and symptoms of hypertension and instead of giving details regarding the treatment, gave a list of suggested products. The users could further obtain more details of the suggested products. However, no information was given regarding the author, date of creation, reference list, justification of claims, email address of the author, credentials, etc. The information was not unbiased and did not meet the search strategy. As there was no word on the advertising policy, it could be implied that the information presented was meant for the promotion of the company’s own products. However, the users on navigating further to the specific product name given by the web page, were able to obtain a list of evidence-based studies that substantiated the claims made of the product. Thus it can be found that although the Himalaya herbal website was able to meet the certain criteria mentioned by the HONCODE, there could be further improvements in the manner in which it fulfilled HONCODE. References Himalaya Herbal Healthcare (2010). Hypertension, Retrieved on July 25, 2010, from Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertension