Health On the Net Foundation

Health On the Net Foundation (HON) is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 and based in Switzerland. The stated mission of the foundation is to help both laypersons and medical practitioners find useful and reliable medical and health information online.

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HON Foundation issued a code of conduct (HONcode) for medical and health Web sites to address reliability and usefulness of medical information on the Internet. HONCode is not designed to rate the veracity of the information provided by a Web site. Rather, the code only states that the site holds to the standards, so that readers can know the source and purpose of the medical information presented.

The principles of the HONcode are:

1. Authority - information and advice given only by medical professionals, or a clear statement if this is not the case
2. Complementarity - information and help are to support, not replace, patient-healthcare professional relationships which is the desired means of contact
3. Confidentiality
4. Attribution - references to source of information (URL if available online)
5. Justifiability - any treatment, product or service must be supported by balanced, well-referenced scientific information
6. Transparency of authorship - contact information, preferably including email addresses, of authors should be available
7. Transparency of sponsorship
8. Honesty in advertising and editorial policy

Health On the Net Foundation was granted on 23rd July 2002 NGO status by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Controversy

A journal article raised a number of problems with the HONcode logo, indicating that consumers may mistake it as an award or interpret it as an indicator for assessed information. Other issues with the HONcode logo were discussed in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMiR), a peer-reviewed eHealth journal. JMIR article Websites which are not in compliance with HONcode can continue to display the logo, as Health On the Net Foundation (HON) has no means of obligating the offending webmaster to remove the logo. Clicking on that logo (for verification) will not indicate that the site is out of compliance, as HONcode only indicates that sites are "undergoing annual review". Hence, websites which are not in compliance with HONcode may still be displaying the HONcode logo, calling into question the entire principle of HONcode. Other problems with the application of the HONcode principles are that HON does not have a means of verifying many of the principles, such as credentials (medical or otherwise) as stated on websites displaying the logo, or that copyright or confidentiality is not violated by webmasters. HONcode relies on the webmaster for honest representations about compliance with the principles.