Review article
User Assessment of a Specialized Health Portal PLIVAzdravlje
Ivana Klinar
Hrvoje Iveković
Tamara Kurilić
Martina Ljubić
Krešimir Biškupić
Aleksandra Welle Jeras
Abstract
The Internet enabled the development of
new methods for cooperation and electronic communication
between patients and physicians. Therefore, the patients
took an active role in the preservation of health and
treatment of diseases. Our specialized health portal www.
plivazdravlje.hr has an international certifi cate of quality,
reliability and credibility of information on health and
medical Web sites, i.e. the HONcode (The Health on the
Net Foundation Code of Conduct). It has been active since
2001 and the average daily visit count is between 5 000
and 6 000. It is the fi rst specialized health portal in the
Croatian language.
To assess user satisfaction, we conducted an on-line anonymous
survey about the reliability and quality of provided
information, most frequently browsed topics and other
information our users would like to obtain on the portal.
The survey was voluntary and the users only had to provide
socio-demographic and educational information. The survey
was active during the fi rst quarter of 2005, it lasted for 45
days and we received 534 completed questionnaires.
The visitors of PLIVAzdravlje are mostly women aged
between 15 and 55, with professional qualifi cations ranging
from elementary school to master's and doctoral degrees.
More than half of our users search for news relating
to medicine, almost half of them for information about
diseases and symptoms, while one third are searching for
information about nutrition. However, the information about
the prevention of diseases and sexuality is searched less
often. Most participants in our survey said that they had
found the wanted information at PLIVAzdravlje. They said
that they would also like to have more information about
prevention, nutrition, medicines, sexuality and fi tness. All
features of PLIVAzdravlje got high grades. The thorough
user assessment of quality, reliability, information content
and updating of information at specialized health portals
set high standards for the launching of new web pages with
similar contents in the Croatian language.
Keywords
Internet; health; medicine; information; quality
Hrčak ID:
18996
URI
Publication date:
15.11.2004.
Visits: 2.242 *