Survey shows support for ‘.health’ TLD

There is considerable support for a ‘.health’ top level domain (TLD), but as long as it is restricted to sites offering professional advice only, says a new survey by the Health On the Net Foundation.

45% of patients and professional groups surveyed across the US and Europe said that a ‘.health’ TLD would be useful in helping to identify medical websites. Half of those responding said that such a site should only be allowed if it contains medical evidence.

"This interesting result shows the receptivity, expressed by a sample of international web users, to the implementation of a top-level domain dedicated to quality health websites," says the report.

The survey also asked respondents which out of all the existing TLDs they felt they were able to trust. 87% said they trusted ‘.edu’, used to signify academic institutions in North America, 83.3% said that ‘.gov’ was trustworthy. The TLD ‘.org’, normally used to represent a charitable or non-profit organisation, came third with 79.7%.

Likewise, the most trusted sources for both patients and professionals health information were universities and consumer sites sponsored by medical journals. Consumer sites sponsored by non-commercial medical organisations were visited far more often in the US than in Europe, the survey found.

The least trusted source of information, with 25% of respondents expressing scepticism, are websites from pharmaceutical companies.

Additionally, health information verification schemes tend to be ignored by users and not clicked on, according to a limited German study cited by the survey.