JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Hypertension (HTN) has become one of the most prevalent chronic diseases worldwide, resulting in substantial financial burdens and losses for people and societies. In China, hypertensive patients frequently obtain health-related information on WeChat, which has become a primary source of medical information for health consumers. However, no study has explored the overall information quality of HTN on WeChat to date.

Objective:

This study aimed to assess the quality of the information in HTN treatment-related articles on WeChat in terms of credibility, accuracy, and completeness.

Methods:

We searched for HTN treatment-related information based on WeChat. Articles were included according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria and recorded the basic information. Then, We used two instruments to evaluate the quality of the articles. First, we adopted the DISCERN instrument, which assesses the credibility, and details of treatment information. For description, the scores were classified into five grades “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” “poor,” and “very poor.” Second, we applied the Chinese Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Hypertension (2018 Edition) as a supplementary to evaluate the specific medical content accuracy and completeness. Third, we combined the two tools to measure the overall quality of the article and explored difference comparison and correlation analysis based on that. Two independent reviewers assessed the quality.

Results:

A total of 101 articles were reviewed. Of the articles’ characteristics, 79.2% (80/101) introduced therapeutic measures. As for the DISCERN assessment, with a meaning score of 31.75 (SD 9.70). There were no “excellent” (mean score>63) articles; most authors ignored the consequences of no treatment and the treatment choices how to affect the quality of life. In medical content evaluation, adherence to Hypertension Guidelines was generally low in the accuracy, completeness, and even existing error information. Regarding the overall quality, the mean scored 10.42 (SD 2.37). Significantly, on the one hand, there was a significant quality difference among the five sources of uploaders (P=.03); the articles with references were of better quality than none (P<.001). On the other hand, significant correlations were observed between the DISCERN and the medical content score (P<.001), while no correlation between the DISCERN score and the reading, “likes” numbers (P=.85, P=.34, respectively); the content score was consistent (P=.68, P=.30, respectively).

Conclusions:

To date, the WeChat platform has inadequate supervision in difficulty tracking information sources and excessive advertisements, which results in the poor quality of information. Future work should strengthen the quality management of crucial information, such as references and consequences of no treatment. In brief, regulating the health information available online for quality is essential to ensure that the public obtains accurate information and creates a safe information ecological environment.