As information retrieval through internet has been popularized, a demand of medical information has been increased. But most medical information is provided by commercial web sites without evaluation the quality of information. So we suggested there w...
As information retrieval through internet has been popularized, a demand of medical information has been increased. But most medical information is provided by commercial web sites without evaluation the quality of information. So we suggested there were a demand for drug information supplement by special medical institutions. The aim of this research was to investigate medical information on the web sites of hospital, especially department of pharmacy, ad discuss methods of improvement. We selected the web sites of tertiary medical institutions had over 500 beds and evaluated question and answer (Q&A) sites on the webs in terms of consulting fields, overall organization and easiness of access. Among the consulting fields, we selected medicine Q&A field and estimated answering method, quality of Q&A and the time required to answer. We also conducted a verbal questionnaire survey of patients or their family to check the demands of medical information. Among the 39 institutions, 23 institutions(59%) performed Q&A on the webs and the consulting fields were mainly composed of disease(95.7%, 22 of 23) and medicine(26.1%, 6 of 23). Overall organization of Q&A sites was managed by central or each clinical department. Both management methods had similar rates(54.5%, 41%) but all Q&A sites of medicine was conducted by department of pharmacy. The access to the Q&A sites was easy regardless of consulting fields. We couldn't evaluate Q&A sites of medicine precisely because the only three web sites had conducted Q&A during the research period. As a result of questionnaire survey, 83.3% of answerers who were using internet expressed positive opinions about health information obtaining through the Q&A site of medical institution. But most people didn't know how to use the Q&A sites of hospital. In conclusion, disease consultation on the web was relatively activated but medicine consultation was very insufficient. So we should make an effort to provide medicine information on the web and discuss pharmacist's role in this part.