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Jen-Ai Hospital: Websites Re-accredited with HONcode
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2007/02/06
BY MARK CHAN
TAICHUNG, JEN-AI HOSPITAL - DALI
¡@¡@Jen-Ai Hospital websites have been re-accredited with HONcode, once again! In 2003, Jen-Ai Hospital's English website and International Patient Center website were certified by Health on the Net Foundation (HON). In 2004, the Chinese website (http://www.jah.org.tw/) and Baby Web (http://www.jah.org.tw/babyweb.asp) also received the same recognition. HONcode needs to be re-accredited on a yearly basis. There are 9 HONcode-accredited websites in Taiwan, currently - Jen-Ai Hospital website is the first to be reaccredited, this year. In addition, starting last year, HON Foundation introduced a new logo with the month & year that the website has been accredited.
¡@¡@HONcode, created by Health on the Net Foundation in 1996, addresses one of Internet's main healthcare issues: the reliability and credibility of medical and health-related information on the Web. The HONcode aims to raise the quality of healthcare information available on the Net. It is a self-regulatory, voluntary certification system based on an "active seal" concept. While primarily intended for healthcare site developers and publishers, the blue-and-red HONcode seal on subscribing sites also helps users identify sources of reliable information. Some 5,000 websites are now formal HONcode subscribers, covering 72 countries of which about 50% of these websites are based in the U.S., but the proportion of European and other non-U.S. sites has been steadily growing in the past few years. HON web site (http://www.healthonnet.org/) is visited by 27,000 visitors world-wide per day. In Taiwan, there were only 9 websites that once adhered to the HONcode (2 of these websites are Jen-Ai Hospital websites).
¡@¡@The requirement for medical and health websites to be recognized with HONcode involves the compliance of 8 basic principles, including the authority of the information provided, data confidentiality and privacy, proper attribution of sources, transparency of financial sponsorship and the importance of clearly separating advertising from editorial content. The HONcode now exists in 34 language versions. In order to raise the quality and reliability of healthcare information available on the Internet in Taiwan, Dr. Ming-I Chan Liao, the Superintendent of Jen-Ai Hospital, prepared the Traditional Chinese version of HON's 8 ethical principles for medical and health websites - the 8 principles in Traditional Chinese is available on Jen-Ai Hospital's Chinese website at:
http://www.jah.org.tw/chinese/4_activities/2_jen-ai/2003/08/0811_ipc.asp or on HON's website at:
http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Chinese_traditional.
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