Quality of Online Information for Management of Leg Pain in Children and Adolescents With Hypermobility-Associated Conditions.

AIM: Online health information seeking continues to gain popularity. Quality assessment of online information is particularly important for patient populations with low satisfaction and disengagement from health professionals and services, such as hypermobility-associated conditions. We aimed to assess the quality of online health information, for management of lower limb pain in children with hypermobility-associated conditions, available through search engines and corresponding AI-generated overviews. METHODS: Webpages were collated from Google searches and the corresponding overviews presented by Gemini, using the search terms 'management of lower limb pain in children with hypermobility-associated conditions'. Webpage quality was assessed using the Health Information Website Evaluation Tool, while the Quality Assessment of Medical Artificial Intelligence was used to evaluate the quality of AI-generated overviews. RESULTS: 20 webpages and four AI-generated overviews were evaluated. Three webpages were rated as good quality, with 14 webpages rated moderate quality. Three webpages were assigned a different rating (moderate or good) by the two reviewers. Quality of information in the AI-generated overviews, was considered good. The lowest scoring domain for webpages was accuracy, and for AI-generated overviews the completeness and provision of resources and references domains. CONCLUSIONS: Availability of webpages on the management of lower limb pain in children with hypermobility-associated conditions is limited, with quality rated as moderate to good. All AI overviews were good quality. Quality improvements are possible for webpages and AI overviews. Online health information seekers should review references informing content, particularly when AI-generated, to ensure existence and relevance.