Health Information on the Internet: Evaluating Greek Health Portals and Depicting Users' Attitudes in West Macedonia, Greece

The increasing use of communication networks help individuals, organizations and governments to access this information as an every day practice to support their decision-making procedures. Information seekers use the web to get hold of information that exists on the Internet. A lot of times this information has to do health. The existence of health portals has made life easier for the people that need this information. However, the quality of portal interfaces as well as the portal content has manY times been in doubt. Many surveys have obtained results that are negative as far as health portal quality is, concerned. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a representative selection of Greek health portals from the actual users' point of view. The evaluation takes place at a small town of North-West Greece called Ptolemais. Questionnaires and interviews as well as interface evaluation techniques are used. The outcome seems positive for the Greek health portals. The study, is extended to get some estimate of simple and professional users' attitudes Upon seeking health related information on the internet in Greek. The conclusions of this study regarding information preferences of health information seekers are compared to international surveys.