Important article from Tim Mackey, Bryan Liang, and colleagues: Ensuring the future of health information online

Lancet. 2013 Oct 26;382(9902):1404. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62215-1. Epub 2013 Oct 25.

Ensuring the future of health information online.

Mackey TK, Liang BA, Attaran A, Kohler JC.

Source

University of California San Diego, School of Medicine, San Diego, CA 92103-8770, USA; Institute of Health Law Studies, California Western School of Law, San Diego, CA, USA. Electronic address: tmackey@ucsd.edu.

"The future of critical health information on the internet is for sale to private bidders, who have no discernible expertise in public health or medicine. Possibly as early as November, 2013, the rights to a new website suffix dot health (.health), alongside familiar “.com” and “.org” domains, are likely to be awarded to a for-profit company by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organisation that controls all internet naming. This will effectively privatise all future uses of the .health domain and could have a profound effect on health information access and quality for generations to come."