During the opening of the Saudi eHealth Conference 2010, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is the head of the general intelligence in Saudi Arabia, announced plans to launch a comprehensive e-health encyclopaedia .

The project, which is sponsored by King Saud University in Riyadh and the Saudi Association for Health Information (SAHI), “will provide comprehensive health information to millions of Arabs in the world,” said Prince Muqrin to journalists.

The project aims to raise the standard of health information and material present online. A study conducted in King Saud University in November 2009 found that generally, health websites in Arabic were regarded as untrustworthy, even by Arabs from the Middle East, who preferred visiting Western websites for up-to-date health-related information.

The research also found that in a sample of 122 Arabic health website, only five were compliant with all eight of the international HONcode 8 principles.

The encyclopaedia will be fully in Arabic, in order to fill in this gap in reliable health information in Arabic. The new project plans to only have highly verified information and will be updated regularly with new information and results from new research. It will be edited by specialized medical personnel only.

No information was provided, however, on when the project should be online.