Compare and Contrast Essay on NIH Website and MEDMD Website

Introduction

The National Institutes of Health is a website that offers help on various health issues that has been abbreviated with NIH.GOV. The website's link is https://www.nih.gov/. The MEDMD website also offers health-related solutions, and its website link is http://medmd.com/.

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Authority

The National Institutes of Health website has been developed, and it is also being run by the Office of Communications and Public Liaison which is part of the Office of the Director, NIH. The site is owned by the twenty-seven centers and institutes that comprise NIH. The office of communications and public liaison has the right qualifications to run the website since it uses information from qualified personnel such as doctors and nurses. The site provides the necessary credentials such as the contact information of the authors that publish within site. The emails, phone numbers and fax number of the site has been published. The authors of that site have their information on the site. For instance, their background information has been briefly described with a picture of the author, qualifications and credentials have also been listed which makes them qualified to publish information in the site. The site is also supported by the United States Department of Health And Human Services.

The MEDMD site, on the other hand, has no definite information of who developed it, contact information is also not displayed on the site, and the site does not offer clear qualifications of the authors that publish on it. The site also is not supported by any organization or commercial body (Usher, 2009).

Objectivity

The National Institutes of Health site has the purpose of informing on health matters. The content is all about health matters and various issues that affect the health care system. The material in the site supports the purpose of the site. The information in the site is geared towards the general public including scholars and students. The NIH site is organized with various subdivisions that focus on specific issues for easier navigation on the site for its users. The site is also focused on offering credible information to its users since it has incorporated the use of external links within a research project or query for further reference. The content contains facts and citations that are related to the health information being presented. The links that have been provided for further reference prove to be more helpful since they highlight the problem areas that have been described with more in-depth analysis. The message provided is from a professional perspective, for example, the site provides high-quality evidence for clinical decision making. The site evaluates the links so that they are credible and secure and they do not redirect to other areas non-interest areas or go off topic to whatever is being evaluated. The domain of the site is also .gov meaning that it is acquired from trusted government domains that can be used for research and offers quality information to the users. The MEDMD site, on the other hand, provides shallow content, although the content supports health care related queries. The site does not contain facts and citations in its content to support whatever is being presented about healthcare issues that affect people. The site medmd is organized but not focused since it does not explain whatever information it offers from a more professional perspective. The site redirects to many outside links that mostly contain ads thereby it becomes difficult for visitors to get high quality referenced information about a particular condition or research studies. The domain of the site does not indicate the website's purpose since it is a privately hosted domain (Usher, 2009).

Authenticity

The NIH website is more authentic since it has .government extensions in its domain while the medmd website does not have an authentic domain. The NIH website is more secure since it uses the "https" designation while the medmd site uses the "http" designation thereby not safe. The medmd site does not contain a contact page while the NIH website contains a contact page that has all the details about the contact information of that site. The NIH website is more authentic since it has articles that have been written with the right grammar while the medmd site contains articles that are not grammatically correct. The NIH website does not have ads that run on their site since it displays only information that is relevant to the public, unlike medmd website that has a lot of advertisements that redirect the user to other pages which do not have content related to health care matters (Usher, 2009).

Reliability

The NIH website is more reliable since its authors are well known and affiliated to the twenty-seven institutions of the NIH. The medmd website has no information about the authors that post information on their site thereby the information cannot be verified if it is credible or not. The NIH site is more reliable since it offers references to the information and also statistical data has been displayed on its website, unlike the medmd website that does not offer any references to the information that has been presented on their site. The readings on the NIH website make information already read seems to be more informing and accurate. The readings on the medmd website seems to address the readers from layman's perspective, information that cannot be substantially used to support any research or clinical health trials. Also, the NIH website is more reliable since its works follow grammar, composition, and spelling unlike the information in the medmd website. Therefore, the NIH website is more reliable (Krol & Halva, 2017).

Timeliness

The information on the NIH website is always up to date and it the information contained in it is always updated regularly. The medmd site is not regularly updated, and it does not contain up to date information regarding the health care issues. The links in the NIH website are current and always marked with the date that they were updated and placed online or revised while the links in the medmd website have no credible information relating to their timeliness thus making it more unreliable. The NIH site does not contain dead links or links that are not working since they have been removed from the website while the medmd website contains links that might have been removed thus making it more unreliable to the public users as it is not timely (Usher, 2009).

Relevance

The NIH website is more relevance than the medmd site since it offers more comprehensive information about a topic under review, unlike the medmd site that offers just particular information about a subject under discussion. The NIH website offers more valuable information than the medmd site since it can be used in clinical research because it is in-depth information on a particular topic. The content written on the NIH website meshes with the content from other sources in that particular area of coverage, and it is more helpful and useful unlike the content from the medmd website which is highly unreliable since it is mostly not unique thus not relevant (Daniel, Oludele, Baguma & Weide, 2011).

Efficiency

The NIH website is more efficient since it provides links that lead to part of its website, unlike the medmd website that offers additional links which redirect to other sites. The NIH website is more efficient since the users can navigate through the website more concisely. The users can browse more efficiently and get whatever information they are looking for quite easily. The medmd website does not offer such efficient ways of navigation in their website for easier information sharing (Krol & Halva, 2017).

Recommendations

The medmd website should create its site to be more efficient so that users can easily navigate through the information that they intend to present.

The medmd website should consider using domains that are more secure so that their information will be reliable.

The medmd website should provide reliable and credible information from authors that are respected and have academic qualifications in the field of health to ensure that the information offered is more reliable.

The medmd website should update their site regularly so that the information displayed is up to date and more reliable.

The medmd site developers should remove ads and links that are not useful to users and not relate to the information being presented on their site to make it more efficient.

References

Daniel, A. O., Oludele, A., Baguma, R., & Weide, T. (2011). Cultural issues and their relevance in designing usable websites.

Krol, K., & Halva, J. (2017). Measuring efficiency of websites of agrotouristic farms from Poland and Slovakia. Economic and Regional Studies, 10(2).

Usher, W. (2009). General practitioners' understanding pertaining to reliability, interactive and usability components associated with health websites. Behaviour & Information Technology, 28(1), 39-44.