Health On the Net Foundation

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The Health On the Net Foundation ( HON ) is a foundation founded in 1995 with headquarters in Switzerland , since 2002 with NGO status at the United Nations. It has been running a certification service for "trustworthy" websites with medical information that has been free of charge since 1996 and has been subject to a fee since 2015. According to its own information, it uses around 3000 pages.

The establishment of the foundation was one of the results of the international conference "International Working Conference on the Use of the Internet and World-Wide Web for Telematics in Healthcare", which took place in Geneva (Switzerland) in September 1995 .

HON has developed the so-called "HON code of conduct" ( HONcode for short ), on the basis of which information sources on the WWW can be certified according to formal criteria with regard to their reliability and credibility. HON offers a search engine that can be used to search for HON-certified sources on the WWW .

HONcode

For the award of the certificate, the content is checked by the HON Foundation for compliance with the prescribed formal criteria, both during the initial certification and subsequently at intervals of several years. The use of the certificate is chargeable. The certification of a website can be checked on the website of the HON Foundation.

The principles of the HONcode are:

  1. Expertise - indicate the qualifications of the writers.
  2. Complementarity (addition) - information and help are intended to support, not replace, medical advice.
  3. Data protection - compliance with the confidentiality of personal data entered by a website visitor.
  4. Assignment - references to the information sources and date must not be missing.
  5. Evidence - Treatments, products, and services must be supported by balanced and verifiable scientific information.
  6. Transparency and contact information.
  7. Disclosure of funding - ownership, sponsors and funding sources must be named.
  8. Advertising policy - separation of advertising and editorial content.

literature

  • Jäckel, A .: Quality of medical and health-related information on the Internet. In: Jäckel, A. (Ed.): Telemedizinführer Deutschland, Minerva, 2002.

Web links