TY - CHAP
T1 - Consumers' online social network topologies and health behaviours
AU - Lau, Annie Y S
AU - Dunn, Adam
AU - Mortimer, Nathan
AU - Proudfoot, Judith
AU - Andrews, Annie
AU - Liaw, Siaw Teng
AU - Crimmins, Jacinta
AU - Arguel, Amaël
AU - Coiera, Enrico
N1 - Copyright the Publisher 2013. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Personally controlled health management systems (PCHMS) often consist of multiple design features. Yet, they currently lack empirical evidence on how consumers use and engage with a PCHMS. An online prospective study was designed to investigate how 709 consumers used a web-based PCHMS to manage their physical and emotional wellbeing over five months. The web-based PCHMS, Healthy.me, was developed at UNSW and incorporates an untethered personal health record, consumer care pathways, forums, polls, diaries, and messaging links with healthcare professionals. The two PCHMS features that consumers used most frequently, found most useful, and engaging were the social features, i.e. forum and poll. Compared to participants who did not use any PCHMS social feature, those who used either the poll or the forum were 12.3% more likely to visit a healthcare professional (P=0.001) during the study. Social network analysis of forums revealed a spectrum of social interaction patterns-from question-and-answer structures to community discussions. This study provides a basis for understanding how a PCHMS can be used as a socially-driven intervention to influence consumers' health behaviours.
AB - Personally controlled health management systems (PCHMS) often consist of multiple design features. Yet, they currently lack empirical evidence on how consumers use and engage with a PCHMS. An online prospective study was designed to investigate how 709 consumers used a web-based PCHMS to manage their physical and emotional wellbeing over five months. The web-based PCHMS, Healthy.me, was developed at UNSW and incorporates an untethered personal health record, consumer care pathways, forums, polls, diaries, and messaging links with healthcare professionals. The two PCHMS features that consumers used most frequently, found most useful, and engaging were the social features, i.e. forum and poll. Compared to participants who did not use any PCHMS social feature, those who used either the poll or the forum were 12.3% more likely to visit a healthcare professional (P=0.001) during the study. Social network analysis of forums revealed a spectrum of social interaction patterns-from question-and-answer structures to community discussions. This study provides a basis for understanding how a PCHMS can be used as a socially-driven intervention to influence consumers' health behaviours.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84887733754&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1032664
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/510135
U2 - 10.3233/978-1-61499-289-9-77
DO - 10.3233/978-1-61499-289-9-77
M3 - Chapter
C2 - 23920519
AN - SCOPUS:84887733754
SN - 9781614992882
VL - 192
T3 - Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
SP - 77
EP - 81
BT - MEDINFO 2013
A2 - Lehmann, Christoph Ulrich
A2 - Ammenwerth, Elske
A2 - Nøhr, Christian
PB - IOS Press
CY - Amsterdam
T2 - 14th World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics (MEDINFO)
Y2 - 20 August 2013 through 23 August 2013
ER -