Nikki Newhouse*, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Sue Ziebland*, University Of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Louise Locock, University Of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Rafael Perera, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Andrew Farmer, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom John Powell*, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Consumer empowerment, patient-physician relationship, and sociotechnical issues Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background:
Health systems, faced with changing demographics, increased burden of chronic disease and an uncertain financial landscape, have prioritised strategies which promote self-management and the active engagement of people in their own care. The use of the internet as a tool to support such patient-centred initiatives is growing. It is clear that patients use the internet to seek out more than just facts and figures about illness and treatments. People also want practical advice from other patients and to share their own experiences. The internet is host to a vast accumulation of this patient experience information, in various media formats, both structured and unstructured. However, the value to other patients of browsing and consuming this online patient experience information is unclear. We have therefore developed three novel web-based interventions which harness information based on the experience of other patients, and we have designed a randomised controlled trial (the EXPERT trial) to test these.

The EXPERT interventions and trial:
We have developed three multimedia interactive website interventions in three exemplar conditions (asthma, smoking, and caring for someone with multiple sclerosis). These websites contain information (text, audio, and video) based on in-depth qualitative interviews about the experience of living asthma, about the experience of giving up smoking, and the experience of being a caregiver. Our theoretical work indicated that patient experience information could be valuable to support self-management (asthma), to support behaviour change (smoking), and to provide social support (caregivers). In the EXPERT RCT we will compare the efficacy of the intervention sites against control websites which contain facts and figures information on the same health conditions from a respected national health portal. Participants meeting eligibility criteria for individual conditions will be randomised in a 1:1 ratio to one of two password protected sites. Participants will be asked to provide baseline measures prior to allocation. They will then be given the opportunity to create a unique user ID and password which will allow them unlimited access to their allocated website for two weeks. Participants’ website use will be tracked in detail and, after two weeks, participants will be asked to provide follow up measures and they will no longer have site access. A selection of participants will be invited for in-depth interview after completion of the study. We will measure the impact of exposure to online patient experience information on their self-reported general health and on their attitude to internet health information, and we will also measure condition-specific outcomes such as asthma self-efficacy and motivation to quit smoking. We have received ethical approval and recruitment will start in April 2013.