International Trends in Designing Electronic Health Information Literacy for Health Sciences Students: A Systematic Review of the Literature

The Internet has become a crucial source of health information for health sciences students. They increasingly rely on the Internet for health information to support their educational projects, academic activities, clinical practice and research. Surprisingly, it has been shown that students' health information skills for conducting research on the Internet are inadequate. Indeed, developing and improving the health information skill set of health sciences students is required in order for students to effectively locate, critically evaluate, and efficiently use online health information for the effective location, critical evaluation and efficient use of online health information. This paper undertakes a systematic review of the literature with a focus on electronic health information literacy skills with the aim of identifying the current trends, contributions to, and practices in health sciences students' education, and informing researchers in the field universally about the essential baseline for the design and development of effective course contents, pedagogy and assessment approaches. However, majority of students have limited skills for the location, evaluation and effective use of health information on the Internet. Other articles suggest that health sciences students need fully fledged health information skills programs that are integrated with their health sciences education curricula.