E-health advice - pilot
Contact: Hannah Radcliffe. Division of Primary Care, University of Liverpool. e-mail: h.radcliffe@liv.ac.uk Tel: 0151 794 4552
Academic Lead(s)
- Dr. Mark Gabbay (MPCRDC and Liverpool University)
- Dr. Donal Flynn (Dept of Computation, Manchester University)
Researcher
Hannah Radcliffe
Project Status
Ongoing (completion summer 2006)
Collaborating Institutions
Brownlow Medical Centre
Funding
MPCRDC
Aim
To critically explore a central assumption that Internet-based healthcare may contribute towards improvements in patient health.
This will be done by focusing on the role of decision aids and investigating the following research question:
- What types of needs do patients have and whether they can be satisfied by the Internet through access to decision aids and in what type of social system (if any) should such access be embedded?
- To decipher from patients whether tailored decision aids would be of benefit and to use decision aids (DA) as a basis for examining further needs patients may have of the DA(s).
- To discover whether co-management of health care is a concept that patients which to embrace or whether it provides them with a necessary burden they would rather not have to cope with.
Method
The research team will present an Internet-based intervention to 25-30 patients which will incorporate approximately five existing decision aids (DA) that the team decide are appropriate to specific patient groups/types (e.g. male over 60 years of age, women between 18-30 etc).
The Internet-based intervention is envisaged as being in a simple website 'look and feel' form that will enable patients to access DA websites by 'point and click' at embedded DA links; the researcher would bookmark the intervention website onto the interviewee's Internet browser during the baseline interview or provide them with a CD with all the necessary information. The website will be designed in a PHR look-alike, incorporating (dummy) personal health information.
Prior to the project a focus group will take place with members of the public, researchers and clinicians invited. During the group the project will be discussed and the interview questions will be devised. Patients will be interviewed at baseline and after 1 month detect effects such as use, non-use identification of needs for the decision aid, and attitudinal or behavioural change. 3-5 providers will be interviewed as well at baseline and after 1 month to detect changes as well as their perspective on patient effects. All research will be qualitative. At the end of the interview there will be a small focus group with a cross section of participants who have taken part in the study. The results will be presented to the group to ensure that they are happy with the findings and that the results have been expressed as they wished them to be. Further clarification can then be done.