Can Online Medical Product Reviews Be Trusted?

Sometimes, you might have cases when you are feeling sick or not well, your curiosity and panic cause you to search up your own symptoms. Other times, you might be wondering about a new drug, or medical product, and aren’t quite sure what to make of it, so you look to your most accessible resource to tell you about it. The big question is, can online medical product reviews be trusted? If so, what makes them trustworthy? If not, what are the reasons for that as well?

Here are some key points that you need to consider whenever you are using the internet as your key resource material and reviews from others as a focal point:

Quantity of Reviews

Whenever you are looking for certain products and want to make a judgement call on them, if you are using reviews as a key tool, you’ll need to ensure that there are enough resources basing your case on. In most cases, you’ll want to look at products that have lots of reviews.  The more reviews, the more information you’ll have. Of course, the quantity of reviews does not alone determine if something is good or safe. The reliability lies in multiple factors, and something with only a few reviews does not necessarily mean it is bad, defective, or not up to standards. If a product is new on the market, you may not see that many reviews work with, and this might deter you from purchasing or even considering a quality product. It’s always smart to go with the product that reviews well, and has the most positive feedback, but don’t let numbers alone be your one deciding variable.

Quality

The number of reviews is important, yes. But what can be just as integral is the quality of a review. When reading on certain products, try and check to see if people reviewing certain items have taken the time to weigh both aspects evenly. Do they go in depth to help you understand what makes that product great, underwhelming, or downright terrible? Do they do their proper research? If the review covers is detail oriented, that high quality review might be worth ten reviews that might state something simplistic and without much thought and effort.

The Sources

Quality and quantity are both important to the review process, but you also need to consider where these reviews are coming from. When dealing in different industries and markets, are the people who are reviewing products examining them with an eye of professionalism? The experts at CPOE.ORG will tell you how important it is to have reviewers with legitimate understanding and genuine experience when it comes to products. This is to say, if the product falls under a certain category of the market, does the person telling you this is good or bad have experience dealing with products that are similar to this? Additionally, don’t discredit reviews from the average consumer as well. For they can give quality thought into a product that you might deal with, handle or consume similarly if you have the same experience level. Check to see what sources your reviews are coming from.  

Average Statistics

When looking at reviews, look at where the average tends to fall under. Yes, you want to read how great certain products are and might be reluctant to hear about defective or unreliable products, but if the average review doesn’t fall into either of those extremes, then you know you are dealing with a few outliers. The average is where you can trust most of the opinions because you need to factor in that there will inevitably be some products that are defective and may only be a one off. And keep in mind how often most people might leave a review.  If there are a few disgruntled reviews, these may be attributed to the fact that people are more inclined to want to complain about a problem with a product but perfectly working products may not incentivize you to rate them accordingly. If you had a positive experience, you may simply forget or not see it as worth your time to leave positive feedback.  

Intent

Understand the intent of every review. As mentioned, many negative reviews may imbalance the average, pulling it down, because they did not have a positive experience, but may be part of an outlier group. They have a biased reasoning to leave that review. If someone was paid or sponsored to leave a review, then they have been incentivized the opposite way and hold just as much bias to leave that dazzling review. Recognize those with certain intent, keeping in mind they still may have important information but not being blinded simply because it leans one way or another.

To answer the question briefly, can online medical product reviews be trusted? Yes. And no. You may be able to gain important information about products, even and especially from well trusted and unbiased sources, but it is your responsibility to be educated on these products with as much knowledge as possible.