Readers often ask me about finding health and medical information on the internet. How can they tell if it’s credible? How do they know if it applies to them? How can they use the information to their benefit?

There is a lot of excellent information available through the Internet. Other information can be dangerous to our health if not reviewed with a discriminating eye.

This column will present the first of several guidelines that can be used to help us find the information most useful for finding the best information for us.

For more than 10 years, a not-for-profit group called Health on the Net (HON), based in Switzerland, has been reviewing health and medical information Web sites, and credentialing them based on its stringent eight-point Code of Conduct. To be approved, Web sites must adhere to everything from financial disclosures, to authoritativeness, to privacy, attribution, and what they call "complementarity" which refers to support of the doctor-patient relationship. Web sites which adhere to the HON Code are considered to be excellent resources for credible information.

A health or medical information Web site may apply to be approved for the HON credential. Once approved, HON provides a logo and a link so that Web site’s visitors will know the site adheres to the Code of Conduct. You can find an example at www.DiagKNOWsis.org.

You can use the HON credential in two ways to find the information you need. First, go directly to the HON Web site at: www.HON.ch . That’s correct – it ends in ".ch" -- the ".ch" is the extension used by organizations in Switzerland. There you’ll find a search bar in which you can type in key words, names or concepts. The results will come from Web sites that HON has approved.

A second way to use HON’s credentialing is to look for its logo when you find a Web reference in some other way. Some Web sites that have been approved by HON use the logo only on the homepage. Others place it on every page of their site. If you find the logo, click on it. You’ll be taken to the HON Web site and it should verify the logo has been used with its approval.

There are other ways to be sure the information you find online is reliable. We’ll review more of them in future columns.

(This is a multi-part column.  Link to Part II:  Use of Medical Journals)