Published 6 August 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1136
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1136

Letters

Internet and health care

iwantgreatcare: problems

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

There are numerous problems with the concept behind iwantgreatcare.org, and many have already been highlighted by Cohen’s blog.¹ With regard to the website, it is claimed that there are measures in place to identify abuse such as multiple posts by a single person.² However, what is to stop a grudge bearing patient or an overly tempted doctor from logging in as different users and swaying the overall reviews to one side? As a public health professor from my epidemiology module would say, the results and reviews for each doctor will be greatly biased in that only patients who are proficient in using the internet will be able to contribute. Perhaps the computer literate population has different expectations of a doctor than people not trained in information technology—notably, elderly patients.

Although 96% of the reviews on the website were positive in the first week, I still believe that the website will . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ School of Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT

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• Chiu, D., Ande, P., Coward, R. A., Woywodt, A. (2009). The times they are a changin'--the Internet and how it affects daily practice in nephrology. NDT Plus 2: 273-277 [Full text]  

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