Quality and readability of online health information produced by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran

  The Ministry of Health and Medical Education is one of the main providers of health information for patients and caregivers in Iran. The current study aimed to assess the quality and readability of online health information produced by the Ministry and its affiliated organizations. In this descriptive-survey study, the websites of the Ministry of Health and its affiliated medical universities (N=48) were assessed during April to July 2018. The corpus included 10780 records; however, only 7164 records produced for patient education were included in the study. Finally, a sample of 215 records were randomly selected and reviewed by two researchers. The quality and readability of the records were assessed by DISCERN questionnaire and Flash Dayani formula, respectively. The mean scores for the quality (M=41.14) and readability (M= 35.27) of health information indicated a moderate quality and low readability. The highest mean scores on information quality (M= 49.50) and health information readability (M= 54.28) were obtained by Tabriz and Shahid Beheshti Universities of Medical Sciences, in that order. The quality of online health information produced by the Ministry of Health in Iran ranges from poor to moderate and it is written at difficult level; therefore, it is recommended to consider international standards for the content of patient education packages prior to developing any educational packages.