Labeling and filtering of medical information on the Internet

Internet information undergoes no quality controls and virtually anybody ca n publish anything. Because of this, it is difficult for searchers to take information retrieved from the Internet at face value. A related problem is the uncontrolled promotion of medical products on the Internet. A further problem of today's Internet is that authors use no uniform keywords and oth er descriptive labels, which deteriorates the quality of search results. A solution for all these problems could be widespread use of descriptive and evaluative metainformation associated with medical Internet information. Ou r concept is based on a recently established infrastructure for assigning m etadata to Internet information, the so-called PICS Standard (Platform for Internet Content Selection). We prototyped a PICS-based rating vocabulary f or medical information (med-PICS), containing descriptive and evaluative ca tegories, to be used by the webauthor and third-pa ty label services (such as medical associations), respectively. We propose an international effort to assign metadata to medical Internet information.