Medical advertising and health information: how to assess reliability?

Every day we are exposed to a huge amount of information about drugs, nutritional supplements and medical services – on the Internet, social media, advertisements and even through recommendations from professionals. But how to distinguish reliable information from manipulation, commercial pressure or outright misinformation?

In the lecture, we will talk about how medical advertising works and why even convincing messages at first glance can mislead people. Using the example of Internet sources, we discuss common advertising techniques, violations of the law, and ways in which people’s decisions are influenced.

Separately, we pay attention to practical tools that help assess the reliability of medical information sources.

Lecturer Aleksei Morgunov is a pharmacist (MSc Pharm), works professionally in a pharmacy, author of ERR R4 (radio show about science-based medicine) and medical blogger (ca. 89,000 followers). Aleksei has published several articles and comments in the Estonian media about drug policy and the rational use of drugs and the spread of false information.

The event is supported by the Swiss-Estonian cooperation program project MeediaRadar (2024-2028), which takes place in cooperation with the National Library and the Ministry of Culture. The project has been co-financed by the Swiss state to reduce economic and social differences in the European Union.