Impact of internet sources on e-patient knowledge Magdalena Czerwinska Department of Economics and Management of Economy Dariusz Czerwinski Institute of Computer Science Lublin University of Technology

Purpose of the research To examine the impact of Internet sources on e-patients knowledge To discuss the review of the most reliable Polish medical portals designed for patients

Main research questions What are the reasons for the existence of medical portals designed for patients What are the advantages to be gained using such portals

Introduction Sources of knowledge about health available for patients The notion of e-patient The problem of the assessment of reliability of medical information in the Internet The HONcode certification

Review of selected portals dedicated to patients in Poland The most popular and best rated in terms of reliability portals dedicated to patients in Poland are: abczdrowie.pl zdronet.pl medonet.pl

The AbcZdrowie.pl Portal (eng. ABCHealth) Poland's largest network of specialist medical services intended for patients the fastest growing group of health-related websites in the Polish Internet the portal has the HONcode certificate using the service is free

What is the offer of The AbcZdrowie.pl Portal ? a wide range of topics - 42 sites dedicated to specific issues and individuals sickness to collect both patients and physicians interested in the topic health advice physicians and medical facilities search engine

What is the offer of The AbcZdrowie.pl Portal ? better health education of Polish Internet users a platform, where patients looking for help, receive expert advice of professionals, and share their medical history free mobile application named “abcZdrowie” – connects patient with experts from different fields of medicine

The AbcZdrowie.pl Portal Fig. 1 Main page of AbcZdrowie.pl portal

Zdronet.pl service (eng. health network) comprehensively provides information and helps users make the right decisions on health to facilitate cooperation between patient and physician information about possible treatments using the service is free of charge

What is the offer of Zdronet.pl ? a plenty of medical issues descriptions from different specialties two databases: one - medicines and the other - health facilities the Virtual Diagnostician the portal has the HONcode certificate

What is the offer of Zdronet.pl ? to prepare the patient to talk with doctor and to rise the health awareness to provide users with comprehensible, current and credible knowledge related to medicine and healthy lifestyle portal cares about the integrity, objectivity and a high level of posted information

Zdronet.pl Fig. 2 Main page of Zdonet.pl portal

Portal Medonet.pl to provide patients with reliable knowledge of medicine, health and preventive care content stored on the site are grouped into categories, eg woman, man, senior, child, allowing to quickly find an interesting topic to complement the knowledge and provide new information in the field of medicine

What is the offer of Portal Medonet.pl ? the current news in the field of medicine in the country and the world many useful features for people looking for health information: self-diagnosis health assistant health pregnant women assistant tests, calculators and quizzes

What is the offer of Portal Medonet.pl ? databases: medical institutions, drugs database (encyclopedia), lexicon of diagnostic and imaging tests information films and fragments of medical programs discussing issues of patients interest

Portal Medonet.pl Fig. 3 Main page of Medonet.pl portal

Medicines portals – lepszylek.pl (eng. better medicine) help in choosing the cheapest and best medicines without a prescription, as also as dietary supplements available in Polish pharmacies was created under the project "Internet service supporting rational purchase of medicines and dietary supplements" using the website is free

What is the offer of Portal lepszylek.pl ? drug database with current, approximate prices database of pharmacies in Poland articles on following topics: allergies, diabetes, weight loss and ability to cope with stress

Portal lepszylek.pl Fig. 4 Main page of lepszylek.pl portal

Portals helping choose a specialist lekarze-online.tv (eng. doctor online) rankinglekarzy.pl (eng. doctors rank) znanylekarz.pl (eng. famous doctor) elekarze.pl (eng. e-doctors)

Lekarze-online.tv and Rankinglekarzy.pl portals educational portals that enable patients to find a medical specialist and the information about medical procedures users can communicate with doctors through a discussion forum or directly from selected physicians by e-form patients can share their experiences and recommend doctors

Lekarze-online.tv portal Fig. 5 Main page of Lekarze-online.tv Portal

Rankinglekarzy.pl portal Fig. 6 Main page of Rankinglekarzy.pl Portal

Portal ZnanyLekarz.pl was established in Poland in 2007 a service of reviews about doctors to facilitate the patients to choose the right specialist database: almost 140 000 doctors of all specialties the possibility medical appointments

Portal ZnanyLekarz.pl Fig. 7 Main page of ZnanyLekarz.pl Portal

Elekarze.pl website an extensive database of medical professionals the possibility to book online visit to the doctor Doctors can be searched with the following criteria: city, specialization, disease, family name

Elekarze.pl website Fig. 8 Main page of Elekarze.pl Portal

Other portals containing medical content Portal Pogromcymitowmedycznych.pl (eng. medical myth busters) this website is aimed at overthrowing unjustified views on health Internetnieleczy.pl site (eng. medical myth busters) to educate Internet users that they need to verify the information found in the network by specialists

Pogromcymitowmedycznych.pl Fig. 9 Main page of Pogromcymitowmedycznych.pl portal

Internetnieleczy.pl Fig. 10 Main page of Internetnieleczy.pl portal

Conclusions The portals which was described in this paper represent only a fraction of professional medical content available on the Internet and intended for patients The number of portals for patients and their popularity is reflected in the frequency of use. There is a high demand for this type of services

Conclusions Thanks to the development of ICT technologies patients can benefit from a vast number of information sources Only the high quality of the content posted on the presented portals ensure their effectiveness

Conclusions The patient: does not cover costs related to access to information (no charge for the use of portals) has fast access to the most current information at any time can benefit from the experience of other Internet users and exchange opinions on the medical issues

Conclusions A study on the practical use of the portals described by patients could become an interesting development considerations Identification of the strengths and weaknesses of portals for patients could be done The ranking of researched portals could be created

Thank You for your attention