Work

Weaving clinical expertise in online health communities

Year: 2014

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Many patients visit online health communities to receive support. In face-to-face support groups, health professionals facilitate peer-patients exchanging experience while adding their clinical expertise when necessary. However, the large scale of online health communities makes it challenging for such health professional moderators' involvement to happen. To address this challenge of delivering clinical expertise to where patients need them, we explore the idea of semi-automatically providing clinical expertise in online health communities. We interviewed 14 clinicians showing them example peer-patient conversation threads. From the interviews, we examined the ideal practice of clinicians providing expertise to patients. The clinicians continuously assessed when peer-patients were providing appropriate support, what kinds of clinical help they could give online, and when to defer to patients' healthcare providers. The findings inform requirements for building a semi-automated system delivering clinical expertise in online health communities.

Source: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

DOI: 10.1145/2556288.2557293

Authors: Jina Huh, Wanda Pratt

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Washington

Language: English

Topic: Health Literacy and Information Accessibility

Subfield: General Health Professions

Field: Health Professions

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine