About this Site

The purpose of this site is to provide a searchable database of quality-assessed links to prostate cancer information on the internet. It should serve as a "first port of call" for prostate cancer information for our target audience.

Target audience

  • people with prostate cancer
  • people concerned about prostate cancer (such as carers, family members)
  • health care professionals providing their care

The site is supported by a range of organisations and is overseen by a Steering Group.

A New Approach

This site is pioneering a new approach to web portals. We directly assess the quality of the information we link to, using an appraisal instrument developed by Minervation specifically for this project. This instrument, and the whole process of quality assessment, is still in development; we expect to refine and modify it over time.

Quality is not an easy thing to define. We believe that the set of ratings we have devised is useful and effective. Therefore, we offer this information as a guide to finding the best possible resources about prostate cancer on the web. We look forward to hearing what you think about it and whether you think it works.

In this section you can find out more about:

  • Who is behind this site?
    UK Prostate Link is jointly funded by the Department of Health and members of the Prostate Cancer Charter for Action (PCCA) to improve access to high quality information about prostate cancer. Minervation Ltd were commissioned as the independent provider in January 2005.
    Find out more about the PCCA and Minervation.
  • What do the star ratings mean?
    The five-star rating system was developed by Minervation after a literature review , consultation and validation process. The ratings represent Minervation's judgment of the quality of web pages. This is an experimental approach, however, and we will be evaluating its performance over time.
    Find out more about how we assess quality.
  • How can I get involved?
    We hope that this site, and the methods we have deployed, will be useful to our users. We are sure, however, that there is room for improvement and would like your help. Whether you just want to send us your views, suggest a new site to include or report a missing page, we would love to hear from you.
    Tell us what you think.