Healthline

Last updated

Healthline Media
Healthline logo.svg
Type of business Subsidiary
Founded1999;25 years ago (1999) [1] (as YourDoctor.com)
Headquarters San Francisco, California & New York, New York, United States
OwnerHealthline Media (Red Ventures)
Products Health information services
Employees279 (2018)
URL www.healthline.com

Healthline Media, Inc. is an American website and provider of health information headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1999, relaunched in 2006, and established as a standalone entity in January 2016. Healthline has been ranked towards the middle of top-ranking health information websites. A study of top-ranking health websites published in 2021 evaluated its quality as "good", compared to MedlinePlus's "excellent" scores and Medical News Today's "fair/good" ranking. [2]

Contents

Description

Healthline Media runs healthline.com, which publishes health and wellness information. [3] It also has provided health content to third party websites. In 2010, Healthline Media signed an agreement to provide medical and health-related content to Yahoo! Health. [4] Other partners have included AARP.com, The Dr. Oz Show web site, [5] and insurance company Aetna. [6]

A 2020 study of readability ranked Healthline the second hardest to read (highest education level required) among the top five Google search results for "phenylketonuria", excluding Wikipedia. [7]

History

Healthline Media was founded in 1999 by endocrine specialist James Norman as YourDoctor.com. [5] In 2006, the company re-launched as Healthline Networks. [8]

In 2011, Healthline was reported to be losing money because it was licensing its content from others. The company invested $1 million to develop its own content. [9] By 2013, it had over $21 million in revenue and 105 employees, with offices in New York City and San Francisco. [8] Deloitte ranked Healthline Media as one of the top 500 fastest-growing technology companies in North America from 2010 to 2013. [10]

In January 2016, Healthline raised $95 million in growth equity financing through Summit Partners. [11] [9] Under the terms of the agreement, Healthline's media business was established as a standalone entity with David Kopp as CEO. The firm acquired the health news website Medical News Today and reference website MediLexicon in May 2016. [12]

In July 2019, Healthline was acquired by Red Ventures. In August 2020, Healthline acquired Psych Central. [13]

Reception

While some writers have used terms like "reliable" [14] to describe Healthline, others have questioned both the quality of its content and its usability and readability.

For example, the site Health News Review said a Healthline article about a new medication used promotional language copied from the drug-maker's press release, neglected to cite side effects, and framed the drug's claimed benefits in misleading language that failed to accurately reflect the evidence in a peer-reviewed medical journal. [15] [16] Another news reviewer noted that an article on depression cited studies that had not been peer-reviewed, but provided "multiple perspectives from both within and outside the research articles" without exaggeration. [17]

In a study using coverage of neck pain to evaluate a tool designed to review health websites, Healthline received a score of "good". In particular, it received high marks in areas such as accuracy, readability, disclosure of sources and ownership, and usability, with lower scores in areas such as comprehensiveness and accessibility. [18]

Healthline is included on Wikipedia's spam blacklist due to its publication of misinformation. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aetna</span> American insurance company

Aetna Inc. is an American managed health care company that sells traditional and consumer directed health care insurance and related services, such as medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, long-term care, and disability plans, primarily through employer-paid insurance and benefit programs, and through Medicare. Since November 28, 2018, the company has been a subsidiary of CVS Health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Health On the Net Foundation</span> Nonprofit organization that certifies online medical information

Health On the Net Foundation (HON) was a Swiss not-for-profit organization based in Geneva which promoted a code of conduct for websites providing health information and offered certificates to those in compliance.

WebMD is an American corporation which publishes online news and information about human health and well-being. The WebMD website also includes information about drugs and is an important healthcare information website and the most popular consumer-oriented health site.

Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation can exist without specific malicious intent; disinformation is distinct in that it is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths.

Medical News Today is a web-based outlet for medical information and news, targeted at both the general public and physicians. All posted content is available online, and the earliest available article dates from May 2003. The website was founded in 2003 by Alastair Hazell and Christian Nordqvist. It was acquired by Healthline Media in April 2016.

eMedicine is an online clinical medical knowledge base founded in 1996 by doctors Scott Plantz and Jonathan Adler, and computer engineer Jeffrey Berezin. The eMedicine website consists of approximately 6,800 medical topic review articles, each of which is associated with a clinical subspecialty "textbook". The knowledge base includes over 25,000 clinically multimedia files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reliability of Wikipedia</span>

The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red Ventures</span> American media company

Red Ventures is an American media company that owns and operates brands such as Lonely Planet, CNET, ZDNet, The Points Guy, Healthline, and Bankrate. Red Ventures focuses on news, advice, and review websites. The company's corporate headquarters is located in Indian Land, South Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimedia Commons</span> Online repository of free-use images, sounds and other media

Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Healthgrades Marketplace, LLC, known as Healthgrades, is a US company that provides information about physicians, hospitals, and healthcare providers. Healthgrades is part of RVO Health, a partnership between Red Ventures and Optum, part of UnitedHealth Group. Healthgrades has amassed information on over three million U.S. health care providers. The company was founded by Kerry Hicks, David Hicks, Peter Fatianow, John Neal, and Sarah Lochran, and is based in Denver, Colorado. Jeff Hallock serves as RVO Health's CEO. According to USA Today, Healthgrades is the first comprehensive physician rating and comparison database. The application is part of a trend in health technology in the United States towards consumer-driven healthcare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Health information on Wikipedia</span>

The Wikipedia online encyclopedia has, since the late 2000s, served as a popular source for health information for both laypersons and, in many cases, health care practitioners. Health-related articles on Wikipedia are popularly accessed as results from search engines, which frequently deliver links to Wikipedia articles. Independent assessments have been made of the number and demographics of people who seek health information on Wikipedia, the scope of health information on Wikipedia, and the quality and reliability of the information on Wikipedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Health information on the Internet</span>

Health information on the Internet refers to all health-related information communicated through or available on the Internet.

Psych Central is a mental health information and news website. Psych Central is overseen by mental health professionals who create and oversee all the content published on the site. The site was created in 1995. The site was named as one of the Internet's 50 Best Websites in 2008 by Time, and has approximately 6 million unique visitors per month. PsychCentral was acquired by Healthline in August 2020. Former attorney and author, Faye McCray was appointed Editor-In-Chief in 2021.

A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is an affinity group for contributors with shared goals within the Wikimedia movement. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sibling projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media Bias/Fact Check</span> American website

Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is an American website founded in 2015 by Dave M. Van Zandt. It considers four main categories and multiple subcategories in assessing the "political bias" and "factual reporting" of media outlets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social media</span>

Social media became an active place to interact during the COVID-19 pandemic, following the onset of social distancing. Overall messaging rates had risen by above 50%, according to a study by Facebook's analytics department. Individuals at home used social media to maintain their relationships and access entertainment to pass time faster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia and the COVID-19 pandemic</span> Wikipedias response to a global pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was covered in Wikipedia extensively, in real-time, and across multiple languages. This coverage extends to many detailed articles about various aspects of the topic itself, as well as many existing articles being amended to take account of the pandemic's effect on them. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the pandemic – and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage – received widespread media attention for its comprehensiveness, reliability, and speed. Wikipedia experienced an increase in readership during the pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaccine Safety Net</span> Network of medical information websites

Vaccine Safety Net (VSN) is a global network of websites aimed at helping people judge the quality of online information on vaccine safety. It was established in 2003 by the World Health Organization (WHO), which had previously set up the independent Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS), prompted by concern from public health officials regarding the dissemination of potentially harmful health information via the web. By appraising websites, using credibility and content criteria defined by GACVS, the VSN has been developed to deliver information that is easy to access and up-to-date. As of 2020, the initiative has 89 member sites in 40 countries and 35 languages.

Disinformation attacks are strategic deception campaigns involving media manipulation and internet manipulation, to disseminate misleading information, aiming to confuse, paralyze, and polarize an audience. Disinformation can be considered an attack when it occurs as an adversarial narrative campaign that weaponizes multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value-laden judgements—to exploit and amplify identity-driven controversies. Disinformation attacks use media manipulation to target broadcast media like state-sponsored TV channels and radios. Due to the increasing use of internet manipulation on social media, they can be considered a cyber threat. Digital tools such as bots, algorithms, and AI technology, along with human agents including influencers, spread and amplify disinformation to micro-target populations on online platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

References

  1. ↑ "YourDoctor.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info – DomainTools". WHOIS . Retrieved July 20, 2016.
  2. ↑ Portillo, Ivan A.; Johnson, Catherine V.; Johnson, Scott Y. (2021). "Quality Evaluation of Consumer Health Information Websites Found on Google Using DISCERN, CRAAP, and HONcode". Medical Reference Services Quarterly (Link is to Preprint Version). 40 (4): 396–407. doi:10.1080/02763869.2021.1987799. ISSN   1540-9597. PMID   34752199. S2CID   243864890.
  3. ↑ Tedeschi, Bob (January 23, 2006). "This Site Knows a Cold Isn't a Rock Band". The New York Times . Retrieved January 23, 2006.
  4. ↑ Helft, Miguel (April 1, 2010). "Yahoo Teams Up with Healthline". Bits (blog). The New York Times . Retrieved April 1, 2010.
  5. 1 2 Roush, Wade. "Healthline Battles WebMD With Personalized Medical Search Tools, Body Maps". Xconomy. Retrieved November 30, 2011.
  6. ↑ Kolbasuk McGee, Marianne. "Aetna Taps Healthline for Patient Portal". Information Week. Retrieved March 29, 2011.
  7. ↑ Marsh, Jessie M.; Dobbs, Thomas D.; Hutchings, Hayley A. (October 2020). "The readability of online health resources for phenylketonuria". Journal of Community Genetics. 11 (4): 451–459. doi: 10.1007/s12687-020-00461-9 . ISSN   1868-6001. PMC   7475157 . PMID   32221843.
  8. 1 2 "Healthline Networks, Inc". InsideView. Archived from the original on December 18, 2013. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  9. 1 2 Sluis, Sarah: "How A Focus On Quality And Discipline Revived Healthline Media", April 17, 2019, AdExchanger.com, retrieved November 15, 2020.
  10. ↑ "Technology Fast 500". Deloitte. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013.
  11. ↑ Healthline Media Raises Growth Financing from Summit Partners http://www.summitpartners.com/news/healthline-media-raises-growth-financing-from-summit-partners
  12. ↑ Healthline Media Grows Digital Reach with Acquisition of #1 Website for Medical News Information http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/04/prweb13368746.htm
  13. ↑ "Healthline Media Acquires PsychCentral, Bolstering Healthline's Role as the Top Digital Health Publisher" (Press release). Businesswire. August 14, 2020. Retrieved September 24, 2020.
  14. ↑ Hayawi, K.; Shahriar, S.; Serhani, M. A.; Taleb, I.; Mathew, S. S. (February 1, 2022). "ANTi-Vax: a novel Twitter dataset for COVID-19 vaccine misinformation detection". Public Health. 203: 23–30. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2021.11.022. ISSN   0033-3506. PMC   8648668 . PMID   35016072.
  15. ↑ Victory, Joy (March 28, 2018). "When 'fact-checked' health news doesn't tell the whole story". HealthNewsReview.org . Archived from the original on December 3, 2020.
  16. ↑ Schwitzer, Gary (September 19, 2019). "Why fact-checking alone often fails us on health care topics". Center for Health Journalism. Archived from the original on February 4, 2021.
  17. ↑ Manouchehri, Kimya; Schmid, Julia (February 26, 2020). "Healthline uses multiple perspectives to illuminate findings related to neurological influences on depressive disorders". SciFeye. Archived from the original on February 12, 2021.
  18. ↑ Zubiena, Luke; Lewin, Olivia; Coleman, Robert; Phezulu, James; Ogunfiditimi, Gbemisola; Blackburn, Tiffany; Joseph, Leonard (August 1, 2023). "Development and testing of the health information website evaluation tool on neck pain websites – An analysis of reliability, validity, and utility" (PDF). Patient Education and Counseling. 113: 107762. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2023.107762 . ISSN   0738-3991. PMID   37087877.
  19. ↑ Dupré, Maggie Harrison (February 29, 2024). "Wikipedia No Longer Considers CNET a "Generally Reliable" Source After AI Scandal". Futurism. Retrieved March 1, 2024.
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