MedCIRCLE - Collaboration for Internet Rating, Certification, Labeling and Evaluation of Health Information on the Semantic World Wide Web

MedCIRCLE (www.medcircle.info) is a semantic web project to develop and promote technologies able to guide consumers to trustworthy health information on the Internet and to establish a global web of trust for networked health information. Gateway sites for consumer health information (CisMEF, AQUMED, Certified Medical Web Site Seal of METGES online) will use HIDDEL metadata (Health Information Disclosure, Description and Evaluation Language, expressed in XML/RDF Syntax) to make their annotation and evaluation data machine-processable and accessible for software-agents. Other health subject gateways, accreditation, or rating services are invited to join the collaboration by implementing HIDDEL on their gateways. Expressing self-descriptive or third-party evaluations a machine-processable format allows intelligent agents or client-side software to harvest statements and opinions about the trustworthiness of other websites and assist users in selecting trustworthy websites. The MedCIRCLE project builds on, expands and continues work on rating health information on the Internet piloted within the MedCERTAIN project. While MedCERTAIN provided the core technologies and software for rating and “trustmarking” health information, MedCIRCLE is built around these technologies and involves a wider medical community to assess health information, demonstrating the power of collaborative and interoperable evaluations on the world-wide-web. Other specific aims include refinement and expansion of HIDDEL, to become a standard vocabulary and interchange format for self- and third-party ratings of health information