Due to the overwhelming characteristics of the Internet of Things(IoT)and its adoption in approximately every aspect of our lives,the concept of individual devices’privacy has gained prominent attention from both cus...Due to the overwhelming characteristics of the Internet of Things(IoT)and its adoption in approximately every aspect of our lives,the concept of individual devices’privacy has gained prominent attention from both customers,i.e.,people,and industries as wearable devices collect sensitive information about patients(both admitted and outdoor)in smart healthcare infrastructures.In addition to privacy,outliers or noise are among the crucial issues,which are directly correlated with IoT infrastructures,as most member devices are resource-limited and could generate or transmit false data that is required to be refined before processing,i.e.,transmitting.Therefore,the development of privacy-preserving information fusion techniques is highly encouraged,especially those designed for smart IoT-enabled domains.In this paper,we are going to present an effective hybrid approach that can refine raw data values captured by the respectivemember device before transmission while preserving its privacy through the utilization of the differential privacy technique in IoT infrastructures.Sliding window,i.e.,δi based dynamic programming methodology,is implemented at the device level to ensure precise and accurate detection of outliers or noisy data,and refine it prior to activation of the respective transmission activity.Additionally,an appropriate privacy budget has been selected,which is enough to ensure the privacy of every individualmodule,i.e.,a wearable device such as a smartwatch attached to the patient’s body.In contrast,the end module,i.e.,the server in this case,can extract important information with approximately the maximum level of accuracy.Moreover,refined data has been processed by adding an appropriate nose through the Laplace mechanism to make it useless or meaningless for the adversary modules in the IoT.The proposed hybrid approach is trusted from both the device’s privacy and the integrity of the transmitted information perspectives.Simulation and analytical results have proved that the proposed privacy-preserving information fusion technique for wearable devices is an ideal solution for resource-constrained infrastructures such as IoT and the Internet ofMedical Things,where both device privacy and information integrity are important.Finally,the proposed hybrid approach is proven against well-known intruder attacks,especially those related to the privacy of the respective device in IoT infrastructures.展开更多
The Internet of things(IoT)has become a key infrastructure providing up-to-date and fresh information for policy analysis and decision-making of upper-layer applications.However,there are limited sensing and communica...The Internet of things(IoT)has become a key infrastructure providing up-to-date and fresh information for policy analysis and decision-making of upper-layer applications.However,there are limited sensing and communication resources in IoT devices,which significantly affects the timeliness and freshness of the updated status.This work proposes two schemes,namely,the generation rate control and service rate reservation schemes,to improve the overall information freshness of multiple status update streams at the receiver.Specifically,using the recently proposed Age of Information(AoI)as the metric for evaluating information freshness,we characterized the overall information freshness,i.e.,the overall average AoI at the receiver for both schemes,by considering the urgency difference of status update and streams.Both schemes for status updates and streams,respectively,were formulated as two optimization problems.We proved that both problems are convex and the optimal generation and service rates for different streams are found by the standard convex optimization algorithm.Moreover,we proposed both approximate optimal generation and approximate optimal service rate for fast deployment in heavy and light load cases.Numerical results verify the theoretical findings and accuracy of the proposed approximate solutions,guiding the design and deployment of IoT.展开更多
Improving the information freshness is critical for the monitoring and controlling applications in the cellular Internet of Things(IoT).In this paper,we are interested in optimizing the bandwidth allocation dynamicall...Improving the information freshness is critical for the monitoring and controlling applications in the cellular Internet of Things(IoT).In this paper,we are interested in optimizing the bandwidth allocation dynamically to improve the information freshness of the short packet based uplink status updates,which is characterized by a recently proposed metric,age of information(Ao I).We first design a status update scheme with channel distribution information(CDI).By relaxing the hard bandwidth constraint and introducing a Lagrangian multiplier,we first decouple the multi-MTCD bandwidth allocation problem into a single MTCD Markov decision process(MDP).Under the MDP framework,after variable substitution,we obtain the single-MTCD status update scheme by solving a linear programming problem.Then,we adjust the Lagrangian multiplier to make the obtained scheme satisfy the relaxed bandwidth constraint.Finally,a greedy policy is built on the proposed scheme to adjust the bandwidth allocation in each slot to satisfy the hard bandwidth constraint.In the unknown environment without CDI,we further design a bandwidth allocation scheme which only maximizes the expected sum Ao I drop within each time slot.Simulation results show that in terms of AoI,the proposed schemes outperform the benchmark schemes.展开更多
With the development of Internet technologies, Internet Based Information System (IBIS) arises with more advantages: Firstly, it is convenient for users to use owing to the introduction of Internet technologies. Secon...With the development of Internet technologies, Internet Based Information System (IBIS) arises with more advantages: Firstly, it is convenient for users to use owing to the introduction of Internet technologies. Secondly, it benefits greatly the data dissemination and data sharing based on Internet. The most important but not the last is that we can establish the information service network supported by its technologies and the facilities of information highway. So, it would be significant to design IBIS to realize the data collection, sharing and dissemination on Internet. There are many factors affecting regional environment. So it is not easy to realize the integrated environmental monitoring. Given this, we designed the Internet based environmental monitoring information system. By the virtue of the Internet based environmental monitoring information system, the management and storage of environmental monitoring data would be easier, which lays the foundation to actualize the environmental monitoring efficiently.展开更多
Background/purpose:With increasing accessibility to the Internet,patients frequently use the Internet for hearing healthcare information.No study has examined the information about hearing loss available in the Mandar...Background/purpose:With increasing accessibility to the Internet,patients frequently use the Internet for hearing healthcare information.No study has examined the information about hearing loss available in the Mandarin language on online video-sharing platforms.The study’s primary purpose is to investigate the content,source,understandability,and actionability of hearing loss information in the Mandarin language’s one hundred most popular online videos.Method:In this project,publicly accessible online videos were analyzed.One hundred of the most popular Mandarin-language videos about hearing loss were identified(51 videos on YouTube and 49 on the Bilibili video-sharing platform).They were manually coded for different popularity metrics,sources,and content.Each video was also rated using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for Audiovisual Materials(PEMAT-AV)to measure the understandability and actionability scores.Results:The video sources were classified as either media(n=36),professional(n=39),or consumer(n=25).The videos covered various topics,including symptoms,consequences,and treatment of hearing loss.Overall,videos attained adequate understandability scores(mean=73.6%)but low(mean=43.4%)actionability scores.Conclusions:While existing online content related to hearing loss is quite diverse and largely understandable,those videos provide limited actionable information.Hearing healthcare professionals,media,and content creators can help patients better understand their conditions and make educated hearing healthcare decisions by focusing on the actionability information in their online videos.展开更多
To evaluate the quality and accuracy of websites written to the public on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) and assess their readability level.METHODSGoogle™, Bing™, and Yahoo™...To evaluate the quality and accuracy of websites written to the public on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) and assess their readability level.METHODSGoogle™, Bing™, and Yahoo™ search engines were searched independently by three researchers in December 2014. Only English-language websites were selected on the basis of predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Researchers independently evaluated the quality of each website by using the DISCERN and the HONcode instruments. The readability levels were calculated using two formulas; the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index, and the Coleman-Liau Readability Index. The agreement between the evaluators was calculated using Cohen kappa coefficient.RESULTSEighty-four websites were finally identified. Scores varied from a minimum DISCERN score of 18 to a maximum of 68 [mean ± SD, 42.2 ± 10.7; median = 41.5, interquartile range, interquartile range (IQR) = 15.8] and a minimum score of HONcode of 0.14 and a maximum of 0.95 (mean ± SD, 0.16 ± 0.19; median = 0.45, IQR = 0.29). Most of these websites were reviewed in 2014 and 2015 (n = 51). The creators of these websites were: universities and research centers (n = 25, 30%), foundations and associations (n = 15, 18%), commercial and pharmaceutical companies (n = 25, 30%), charities and volunteer work (n = 9, 10%), and non-university educational bodies (n = 10, 12%). The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability score (mean ± SD) was 11.9 ± 2.4 and the Coleman-Liau Readability Index score was 12.6 ± 1.5. Significant correlation was found between the two readability scores (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.509, P = 0.001). The overall agreement between evaluators measured by Cohen kappa coefficient was in the range of 0.804-0.876; rated as 'Good'.CONCLUSIONThe DISCERN and the HONcode scores of websites varied and the readability levels of most websites were above the public readability level. The study highlights the areas that need further improvement and development in patient education online materials about IBD.展开更多
Smart farming has become a strategic approach of sustainable agriculture management and monitoring with the infrastructure to exploit modern technologies,including big data,the cloud,and the Internet of Things(IoT).Ma...Smart farming has become a strategic approach of sustainable agriculture management and monitoring with the infrastructure to exploit modern technologies,including big data,the cloud,and the Internet of Things(IoT).Many researchers try to integrate IoT-based smart farming on cloud platforms effectively.They define various frameworks on smart farming and monitoring system and still lacks to define effective data management schemes.Since IoT-cloud systems involve massive structured and unstructured data,data optimization comes into the picture.Hence,this research designs an Information-Centric IoT-based Smart Farming with Dynamic Data Optimization(ICISF-DDO),which enhances the performance of the smart farming infrastructure with minimal energy consumption and improved lifetime.Here,a conceptual framework of the proposed scheme and statistical design model has beenwell defined.The information storage and management with DDO has been expanded individually to show the effective use of membership parameters in data optimization.The simulation outcomes state that the proposed ICISF-DDO can surpass existing smart farming systems with a data optimization ratio of 97.71%,reliability ratio of 98.63%,a coverage ratio of 99.67%,least sensor error rate of 8.96%,and efficient energy consumption ratio of 4.84%.展开更多
Background This work aims to build a comprehensive and effective fire emergency management system based on the Internet of Things(IoT)and achieve an actual intelligent fire rescue.A smart fire protection information s...Background This work aims to build a comprehensive and effective fire emergency management system based on the Internet of Things(IoT)and achieve an actual intelligent fire rescue.A smart fire protection information system was designed based on the IoT.A detailed analysis was conducted on the problem of rescue vehicle scheduling and the evacuation of trapped persons in the process of fire rescue.Methods The intelligent fire visualization platform based on the three-dimensional(3D)Geographic Information Science(GIS)covers project overview,equipment status,equipment classification,equipment alarm information,alarm classification,alarm statistics,equipment account information,and other modules.The live video accessed through the visual interface can clearly identify the stage of the fire,which facilitates the arrangement of rescue equipment and personnel.The vehicle scheduling model in the system primarily used two objective functions to solve the Pareto Non-Dominated Solution Set Optimization:emergency rescue time and the number of vehicles.In addition,an evacuation path optimization method based on the Improved Ant Colony(IAC)algorithm was designed to realize the dynamic optimization of building fire evacuation paths.Results The experimental results indicate that all the values of detection signals were significantly larger in the smoldering fire scene at t=17s than the initial value.In addition,the probability of smoldering fire and the probability of open fire were relatively large according to the probability function of the corresponding fire situation,demonstrating that this model could detect fire.Conclusions The IAC algorithm reported here avoided the passages near the fire and spreading areas as much as possible and took the safety of the trapped persons as the premise when planning the evacuation route.Therefore,the IoT-based fire information system has important value for ensuring fire safety and carrying out emergency rescue and is worthy of popularization and application.展开更多
Background: Patients and public are increasingly relying on Internet for health information. Health care providers are using internet for dissemination of health information. However, health information available on i...Background: Patients and public are increasingly relying on Internet for health information. Health care providers are using internet for dissemination of health information. However, health information available on internet is not well regulated, and information quality varies greatly. Malaria is the leading cause of death and disease in many developing countries and has serious health burden around the world. The Internet could become a major resource for malaria education and information in Africa. This may potentially save millions of lives. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of malaria health and treatment information available on the internet provided by the Nigerian context. Methods: Two key terms (malaria & treatment) were entered into three search engines: Google, Yahoo! and Bing. In order to retrieve articles as if the searches were conducted in Nigeria, the Local Area Network (LAN) settings were changed to a Nigerian proxy server, with a local Internet Protocol address. Three raters evaluated the quality of information using the DISCERN [9] instrument criteria. Kendall’s concordance coefficient (W) was calculated to determine the level of agreement among the three raters. Results: Thirty-eight websites evaluated, and the highest inter-rater average score was attributed to the Patient.co.uk website, followed by Wikipedia web site and Malaria Site. The “Home Remedies for You” website received the lowest score. Most evaluated websites were .com domains. The highest average score was given to .co.uk domains while .int had the lowest score. Conclusions: Improving the quality of malaria-related health information could lead to empowering communities, engaging and assisting them to strengthen their health and social information sharing and support.展开更多
基金Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia under theResearch GrantLRGS/1/2019/UKM-UKM/5/2 and Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University for financing this researcher through Supporting Project Number(PNURSP2024R235),Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University,Riyadh,Saudi Arabia.
文摘Due to the overwhelming characteristics of the Internet of Things(IoT)and its adoption in approximately every aspect of our lives,the concept of individual devices’privacy has gained prominent attention from both customers,i.e.,people,and industries as wearable devices collect sensitive information about patients(both admitted and outdoor)in smart healthcare infrastructures.In addition to privacy,outliers or noise are among the crucial issues,which are directly correlated with IoT infrastructures,as most member devices are resource-limited and could generate or transmit false data that is required to be refined before processing,i.e.,transmitting.Therefore,the development of privacy-preserving information fusion techniques is highly encouraged,especially those designed for smart IoT-enabled domains.In this paper,we are going to present an effective hybrid approach that can refine raw data values captured by the respectivemember device before transmission while preserving its privacy through the utilization of the differential privacy technique in IoT infrastructures.Sliding window,i.e.,δi based dynamic programming methodology,is implemented at the device level to ensure precise and accurate detection of outliers or noisy data,and refine it prior to activation of the respective transmission activity.Additionally,an appropriate privacy budget has been selected,which is enough to ensure the privacy of every individualmodule,i.e.,a wearable device such as a smartwatch attached to the patient’s body.In contrast,the end module,i.e.,the server in this case,can extract important information with approximately the maximum level of accuracy.Moreover,refined data has been processed by adding an appropriate nose through the Laplace mechanism to make it useless or meaningless for the adversary modules in the IoT.The proposed hybrid approach is trusted from both the device’s privacy and the integrity of the transmitted information perspectives.Simulation and analytical results have proved that the proposed privacy-preserving information fusion technique for wearable devices is an ideal solution for resource-constrained infrastructures such as IoT and the Internet ofMedical Things,where both device privacy and information integrity are important.Finally,the proposed hybrid approach is proven against well-known intruder attacks,especially those related to the privacy of the respective device in IoT infrastructures.
基金sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61901066,Grant 61971077sponsored by Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing,China under Grant cstc2019jcyjmsxmX0575,Grant cstc2021jcyj-msxmX0458+2 种基金in part by the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Plan of Chongqing for Returned Overseas Scholars under Grant cx2021092supported by the open research fund of National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory,Southeast University(No.2021D13,No.2022D06)the Industrial Internet innovation and development project(No.TC200A00M).
文摘The Internet of things(IoT)has become a key infrastructure providing up-to-date and fresh information for policy analysis and decision-making of upper-layer applications.However,there are limited sensing and communication resources in IoT devices,which significantly affects the timeliness and freshness of the updated status.This work proposes two schemes,namely,the generation rate control and service rate reservation schemes,to improve the overall information freshness of multiple status update streams at the receiver.Specifically,using the recently proposed Age of Information(AoI)as the metric for evaluating information freshness,we characterized the overall information freshness,i.e.,the overall average AoI at the receiver for both schemes,by considering the urgency difference of status update and streams.Both schemes for status updates and streams,respectively,were formulated as two optimization problems.We proved that both problems are convex and the optimal generation and service rates for different streams are found by the standard convex optimization algorithm.Moreover,we proposed both approximate optimal generation and approximate optimal service rate for fast deployment in heavy and light load cases.Numerical results verify the theoretical findings and accuracy of the proposed approximate solutions,guiding the design and deployment of IoT.
基金supported by the Natural Science Foundations of China under Grant(62171464,62171461)the National Key R&D Program of China(No.11112018YFB1801103)the Natural Science Foundation on Frontier Leading Technology Basic Research Project of Jiangsu under Grant BK20212001。
文摘Improving the information freshness is critical for the monitoring and controlling applications in the cellular Internet of Things(IoT).In this paper,we are interested in optimizing the bandwidth allocation dynamically to improve the information freshness of the short packet based uplink status updates,which is characterized by a recently proposed metric,age of information(Ao I).We first design a status update scheme with channel distribution information(CDI).By relaxing the hard bandwidth constraint and introducing a Lagrangian multiplier,we first decouple the multi-MTCD bandwidth allocation problem into a single MTCD Markov decision process(MDP).Under the MDP framework,after variable substitution,we obtain the single-MTCD status update scheme by solving a linear programming problem.Then,we adjust the Lagrangian multiplier to make the obtained scheme satisfy the relaxed bandwidth constraint.Finally,a greedy policy is built on the proposed scheme to adjust the bandwidth allocation in each slot to satisfy the hard bandwidth constraint.In the unknown environment without CDI,we further design a bandwidth allocation scheme which only maximizes the expected sum Ao I drop within each time slot.Simulation results show that in terms of AoI,the proposed schemes outperform the benchmark schemes.
基金Knowledge Innovation Project of CAS No. KZCX02-308
文摘With the development of Internet technologies, Internet Based Information System (IBIS) arises with more advantages: Firstly, it is convenient for users to use owing to the introduction of Internet technologies. Secondly, it benefits greatly the data dissemination and data sharing based on Internet. The most important but not the last is that we can establish the information service network supported by its technologies and the facilities of information highway. So, it would be significant to design IBIS to realize the data collection, sharing and dissemination on Internet. There are many factors affecting regional environment. So it is not easy to realize the integrated environmental monitoring. Given this, we designed the Internet based environmental monitoring information system. By the virtue of the Internet based environmental monitoring information system, the management and storage of environmental monitoring data would be easier, which lays the foundation to actualize the environmental monitoring efficiently.
文摘Background/purpose:With increasing accessibility to the Internet,patients frequently use the Internet for hearing healthcare information.No study has examined the information about hearing loss available in the Mandarin language on online video-sharing platforms.The study’s primary purpose is to investigate the content,source,understandability,and actionability of hearing loss information in the Mandarin language’s one hundred most popular online videos.Method:In this project,publicly accessible online videos were analyzed.One hundred of the most popular Mandarin-language videos about hearing loss were identified(51 videos on YouTube and 49 on the Bilibili video-sharing platform).They were manually coded for different popularity metrics,sources,and content.Each video was also rated using the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool for Audiovisual Materials(PEMAT-AV)to measure the understandability and actionability scores.Results:The video sources were classified as either media(n=36),professional(n=39),or consumer(n=25).The videos covered various topics,including symptoms,consequences,and treatment of hearing loss.Overall,videos attained adequate understandability scores(mean=73.6%)but low(mean=43.4%)actionability scores.Conclusions:While existing online content related to hearing loss is quite diverse and largely understandable,those videos provide limited actionable information.Hearing healthcare professionals,media,and content creators can help patients better understand their conditions and make educated hearing healthcare decisions by focusing on the actionability information in their online videos.
基金Supportedby the College of Medicine Research Center,Deanship of Scientific Research,King Saud University,Riyadh,Saudi Arabia
文摘To evaluate the quality and accuracy of websites written to the public on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) and assess their readability level.METHODSGoogle™, Bing™, and Yahoo™ search engines were searched independently by three researchers in December 2014. Only English-language websites were selected on the basis of predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Researchers independently evaluated the quality of each website by using the DISCERN and the HONcode instruments. The readability levels were calculated using two formulas; the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index, and the Coleman-Liau Readability Index. The agreement between the evaluators was calculated using Cohen kappa coefficient.RESULTSEighty-four websites were finally identified. Scores varied from a minimum DISCERN score of 18 to a maximum of 68 [mean ± SD, 42.2 ± 10.7; median = 41.5, interquartile range, interquartile range (IQR) = 15.8] and a minimum score of HONcode of 0.14 and a maximum of 0.95 (mean ± SD, 0.16 ± 0.19; median = 0.45, IQR = 0.29). Most of these websites were reviewed in 2014 and 2015 (n = 51). The creators of these websites were: universities and research centers (n = 25, 30%), foundations and associations (n = 15, 18%), commercial and pharmaceutical companies (n = 25, 30%), charities and volunteer work (n = 9, 10%), and non-university educational bodies (n = 10, 12%). The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability score (mean ± SD) was 11.9 ± 2.4 and the Coleman-Liau Readability Index score was 12.6 ± 1.5. Significant correlation was found between the two readability scores (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.509, P = 0.001). The overall agreement between evaluators measured by Cohen kappa coefficient was in the range of 0.804-0.876; rated as 'Good'.CONCLUSIONThe DISCERN and the HONcode scores of websites varied and the readability levels of most websites were above the public readability level. The study highlights the areas that need further improvement and development in patient education online materials about IBD.
文摘Smart farming has become a strategic approach of sustainable agriculture management and monitoring with the infrastructure to exploit modern technologies,including big data,the cloud,and the Internet of Things(IoT).Many researchers try to integrate IoT-based smart farming on cloud platforms effectively.They define various frameworks on smart farming and monitoring system and still lacks to define effective data management schemes.Since IoT-cloud systems involve massive structured and unstructured data,data optimization comes into the picture.Hence,this research designs an Information-Centric IoT-based Smart Farming with Dynamic Data Optimization(ICISF-DDO),which enhances the performance of the smart farming infrastructure with minimal energy consumption and improved lifetime.Here,a conceptual framework of the proposed scheme and statistical design model has beenwell defined.The information storage and management with DDO has been expanded individually to show the effective use of membership parameters in data optimization.The simulation outcomes state that the proposed ICISF-DDO can surpass existing smart farming systems with a data optimization ratio of 97.71%,reliability ratio of 98.63%,a coverage ratio of 99.67%,least sensor error rate of 8.96%,and efficient energy consumption ratio of 4.84%.
基金Supported by the Key Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province(2019B111102002)Shenzhen Science and Technology Program(KCXFZ202002011007040)National Key Research and Development Program of China(2019YFC0810704)。
文摘Background This work aims to build a comprehensive and effective fire emergency management system based on the Internet of Things(IoT)and achieve an actual intelligent fire rescue.A smart fire protection information system was designed based on the IoT.A detailed analysis was conducted on the problem of rescue vehicle scheduling and the evacuation of trapped persons in the process of fire rescue.Methods The intelligent fire visualization platform based on the three-dimensional(3D)Geographic Information Science(GIS)covers project overview,equipment status,equipment classification,equipment alarm information,alarm classification,alarm statistics,equipment account information,and other modules.The live video accessed through the visual interface can clearly identify the stage of the fire,which facilitates the arrangement of rescue equipment and personnel.The vehicle scheduling model in the system primarily used two objective functions to solve the Pareto Non-Dominated Solution Set Optimization:emergency rescue time and the number of vehicles.In addition,an evacuation path optimization method based on the Improved Ant Colony(IAC)algorithm was designed to realize the dynamic optimization of building fire evacuation paths.Results The experimental results indicate that all the values of detection signals were significantly larger in the smoldering fire scene at t=17s than the initial value.In addition,the probability of smoldering fire and the probability of open fire were relatively large according to the probability function of the corresponding fire situation,demonstrating that this model could detect fire.Conclusions The IAC algorithm reported here avoided the passages near the fire and spreading areas as much as possible and took the safety of the trapped persons as the premise when planning the evacuation route.Therefore,the IoT-based fire information system has important value for ensuring fire safety and carrying out emergency rescue and is worthy of popularization and application.
文摘Background: Patients and public are increasingly relying on Internet for health information. Health care providers are using internet for dissemination of health information. However, health information available on internet is not well regulated, and information quality varies greatly. Malaria is the leading cause of death and disease in many developing countries and has serious health burden around the world. The Internet could become a major resource for malaria education and information in Africa. This may potentially save millions of lives. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of malaria health and treatment information available on the internet provided by the Nigerian context. Methods: Two key terms (malaria & treatment) were entered into three search engines: Google, Yahoo! and Bing. In order to retrieve articles as if the searches were conducted in Nigeria, the Local Area Network (LAN) settings were changed to a Nigerian proxy server, with a local Internet Protocol address. Three raters evaluated the quality of information using the DISCERN [9] instrument criteria. Kendall’s concordance coefficient (W) was calculated to determine the level of agreement among the three raters. Results: Thirty-eight websites evaluated, and the highest inter-rater average score was attributed to the Patient.co.uk website, followed by Wikipedia web site and Malaria Site. The “Home Remedies for You” website received the lowest score. Most evaluated websites were .com domains. The highest average score was given to .co.uk domains while .int had the lowest score. Conclusions: Improving the quality of malaria-related health information could lead to empowering communities, engaging and assisting them to strengthen their health and social information sharing and support.
