Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Joint Program Of family and Community medicine Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Evaluation of Health Related Websites
In Saudi Arabia 2010

Researcher
Dr.Eishah M.Shehatah Hassan, MBBS
Family Medicine Resident
Supervisor
Dr.Yahya Makdoom
Consultant family& Community medicine
Joint Program Of family& Community medicine, Jeddah
Statistical Advisor
Dr.Adel Ibrahim
Biostatistics Dpt,PHC,Jeddah
A research submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Saudi Board in Family Medicine

SUMMARY:
This is a cross-sectional descriptive study where the medical websites in Saudi Arabia were searched using Google search engine and according to the inclusion criteria, the selected website (n=48) were evaluated using an evaluation from that was adapted and approved by two Consultants.
The aim of the study was to estimate where the Saudi health related websites stands and to put recommendations for their improvement. The evaluation from included items on transparency and honesty, authority , privacy and data protection, updating information, accountability and accessibility of the websites.
It was found that the overall score ranged between 100 for the Annals of Thoracic Medicine website to 18 for Tabeebok website.
Many of the sites lacked description on the procedures of selecting informations and did not had regular updating of information. Moreover, the majority of the sites had no decleration of sources of information and names and credentials of providers of information which affects their credibility and accountability.
Based on the findings of the study , the recommendation was to have official guidelines by high authorities to be followed by providers of health related websites in Saudi Arabia and to educate the public about the danger of using unreliable websites as sources of their health information.