ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the quality of websites of pharmacoeconomics centers and organizations in the countries of the European Union, the United States and Canada through a validated system with explicit criteria. METHODS: The websites of institutions and centers related to pharmacoeconomics and health economics in the 24 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were identified through browsers. Twenty-four predetermined key words were used. A questionnaire on the quality of the information on health was designed and validated according to standards established in literature. Using this questionnaire, we evaluated the quality of the pharmacoeconomics and health economics centers. RESULTS: In 23 of the 26 items of the validated questionnaire, Cochran's Q was statistically significant. The coefficient of reliability obtained in the questionnaire was 0.90 and the value obtained in Pearson's correlation was 0.812. The 33 pharmacoeconomics and health economics centers evaluated were divided into three subgroups according to the scores obtained on the questionnaire: centers of high quality, average quality (the majority), and low quality. The centers in the high-quality subgroup were: the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, the Centre for Health Economics, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Health Economics Research Unit, the Institute of Health Economics and the Health Economics Resource Center. CONCLUSIONS: The criteria included in the questionnaire used to evaluate the quality of websites on health were: credibility, content, description, links, design, interactivity and safeguards. The quality of the websites of centers related to pharmacoeconomics and health economics analyzed in this study using the criteria established in the questionnaire varied from 30.4% to 79.8%. A validated system with explicit criteria is required to evaluate the quality of information on health available on the Internet.
