Internet drug ratings: AskAPatient.com & WebMD correlate well but Drugs.com does not
Eugen G Tarnow July 21 2015 02:42:33 PM
By Eugen Tarnow, Ph.D.Avalon Business Systems, Inc.
http://AvalonAnalytics.com
Internet drug ratings can help consumers (ever tried reading an FDA approved drug insert?).
Here I compare three internet drug rating sites: AskAPatient.com, Drugs.com and WebMD.com. For the reasons below, I recommend AskAPatient.com as well as WebMD.com
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Fig. 1. Ratings for 10 drugs.
The results are interesting. Ratings on AskAPatient.com and WebMD.com are more negative than on Drugs.com (average rating is 2.6 and 2.8 compared to 3.8). They are also more varied than on Drugs.com. On AskAPatient.com the ratings vary between 1.6-3.4, on WebMD between 2.0-3.5 and on Drugs.com ratings vary between 3.4 and 4.2. (the standard deviation for AskAPatient.com is 0.64, for WebMD it is 0.54, while for Drugs.com it is a much smaller 0.29).
AskAPatient.com and WebMD largely agree on their ratings (correlation is 92%) while AskAPatient.com and Drugs.com do not correlate (correlation is only 23%), see Fig. 2.
Ironically, Google and Bing and DuckDuckGo all feature drugs.com high up on drug related search results.
Fig. 2. Ratings for 10 drugs show little agreement between AskAPatient.com and Drugs.com
The ratings I compared are shown in Table 1.
| AskAPatient.com | Drugs.com | WebMD.com | |
| Levaquin | 1.7 | 3.4 | 2.0 |
| Lexapro | 3.2 | 4.2 | 3.5 |
| Cymbalta | 2.8 | 3.6 | 3.0 |
| Effexor | 3.1 | 3.9 | 3.2 |
| Topamax | 3 | 3.7 | 3.3 |
| Lamictal | 3.4 | 4.2 | 3.5 |
| Zyrtec | 2.1 | 4.0 | 2.8 |
| Cipro | 1.6 | 3.9 | 2.1 |
| Flagyl | 2.5 | 3.7 | 2.6 |
| Depo-Provera | 2.1 | 3.7 | 2.4 |
Table 1. Ratings for 10 drugs.
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