Technical Communication Evaluation of the WebMD Website

1.      Problem: The WebMD website is apparently not sponsored by a reputable healthcare organization which is the first violation of the ATA’s criteria guidelines for a quality health-related site.  If they do have a reputable sponsor then it is not obvious.

Solution: If the site does in fact have a reputable sponsor by a healthcare organization than it should be more obviously displayed on their page so that consumers may recognize it more easily. If they do not have an appropriate sponsor than the site may consider adhering to the ATA’s standards and find themselves one so to appeal to consumers.  Their sponsors are currently appearing to be drug companies which give them the image of being money driven, not as a caring consumer service provider.

2.      Problem: The drug company information on the WebMD website appears to be promoting the company’s interest versus providing objective information.  They sponsor the sections where they discuss the medical treatment provided by their particular drug and although some of the information is objective, these sections of the website are clearly promoting a particular brand of drug more than the treatment options that may improve the health of people suffering with the target medical issue.

Solution: Although WebMD does have a page that instructs consumers on how to recognize sponsor driven messages, this is insufficient.  Rather than skating around the issue of the commercial driven nature of sites like this one, and putting up a site full of disclaimers that the average website user either does not look for or does not know to look for they should make themselves accountable for all content on their website.  This is a health/medical informational site (or at least it claims to be) and it should be held to a higher standard.  These policy pages appear to be for the protection of WebMD, not the consumer.  I would recommend changing their approach to such a business because there, to me, is an ethical issue with how they operate. 

3.      Problem: According to the ATA such websites as WebMD should only offer medical consultation from fully licensed professionals with the appropriate credentials, although some of the articles presented on this website are written by writers who are not necessarily medical professionals.  The research mentions professionals and quotes them, however  the statements are very general such as the following statement made by Sharon Plank, MD, in the article titled, Natural Good Sleep: Tips on Melatonin, Valerian, and More A few natural remedies may help when you can't sleep by Jeanie Lerche Davis:  “Both of those have good scientific evidence backing them up.”  These articles do not specify where the “scientific” evidence came from (WebMD, 2010).  WebMD seems to make an attempt at accrediting the articles by posting that the article was reviewed by an MD, but to me that only means that the article did not make any major mistakes or any extreme claims that would otherwise cause the medical professional to reject the information in the article. 

Solution: The solution to this problem may be to simply edit content to exclude general statements by professionals that could be misleading or exaggeratingly reassuring, or enforce that content is supported using concrete facts and ensure that claims made in these articles are supported in these health articles with information from a reputable source.  This will avoid misleading the website’s users.