How do we choose which sites to link to?
We check to make sure the sites we link to are:
- Accessible for anyone with a disability
- Easy to use to find the information you want
- As far as possible have information that is correct, up to date and complete
The idea for this site followed lots of comments from patients and carers about their difficulties in finding information on the internet about cancer and its treatment.
The main problem was how good the information was. It can sometimes be very difficult to tell as a website may look very professional and yet its contents have little basis in fact. 
Minervation, who helped us build this site, have been using evaluating healthcare websites for some time using a tool called LIDA. By using the LIDA tool it is possible to look at healthcare websites and score how accessible the site is for anyone with a disability, how usable it is (how easy it is to find the information you want) and how reliable the information on the site is.
Each website we link to from this website has been checked using LIDA. This involves some automatic checks the programme does itself as well as members of the project team answering several questions about the website. The programme then gives each website a rating for Usability, reliability and accessibility which are combined to give an overall score.
Where possible we only include sites which score highly in all 3 areas, however sometimes sites may have very useful information but poor website design which has resulted in a low score.
Throughout the website links appear in the order in which the organisation they come from is scored. The exception to this is some local leaflets or specialist nurse details which are tagged to always appear at the top of the page.
Details about LIDA are available by visiting the Minervation website. As well as information they have their on-line version LIDA tool which you can use to check out other websites you may come across.
If you feel we have missed something, would like to comment on existing content or have questions about how the external websites are rated please get in touch.
Page last edited: 01 April 2009
