Beginning in July 2005, several major medical journals, including the Journal of Medical Internet Research, will only consider trials for publication that have been registered in a trial registry before they started. This is to reduce publication bias and to prevent selective reporting of positive outcomes. As existing clinical trial registers seem to be unsuitable or suboptimal for eHealth studies, a free International eHealth Study Registry (IESR) has been set up, allowing registration of...

Peer-review and publication of research protocols offer several advantages to all parties involved. Among these are the following opportunities for authors: external expert opinion on the methods, demonstration to funding agencies of prior expert review of the protocol, proof of priority of ideas and methods, and solicitation of potential collaborators. We think that review and publication of protocols is an important role for Open Access journals. Because of their electronic form, openness...

: Analogous to checklists of recommendations such as the CONSORT statement (for randomized trials), or the QUORUM statement (for systematic reviews), which are designed to ensure the quality of reports in the medical literature, a checklist of recommendations for authors is being presented by the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) in an effort to ensure complete descriptions of Web-based surveys. Papers on Web-based surveys reported according to the CHERRIES statement will give...

BACKGROUND: The use of Internet-based questionnaires for collection of data to evaluate patient education and other interventions has increased in recent years. Many self-report instruments have been validated using paper-and-pencil versions, but we cannot assume that the psychometric properties of an Internet-based version will be identical. OBJECTIVES: To look at similarities and differences between the Internet versions and the paper-and-pencil versions of 16 existing self-report...

BACKGROUND: Low response rates among surgeons can threaten the validity of surveys. Internet technologies may reduce the time, effort, and financial resources needed to conduct surveys. OBJECTIVE: We investigated whether using Web-based technology could increase the response rates to an international survey. METHODS: We solicited opinions from the 442 surgeon–members of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association regarding the treatment of femoral neck fractures. We developed a...

BACKGROUND: In May 2000, AstraZeneca launched a Web service for asthma patients and health-care providers called LinkMedica, which includes an asthma diary for monitoring and self-management. In the diary, the patient enters his or her peak flow, number of doses of rescue medication, and if there have been any asthma symptoms during the previous 24 hours. The patient receives an immediate response from LinkMedica, telling him or her if the asthma is under control and what to do if not, eg,...

BACKGROUND: LinkMedica-Heart is a novel Internet based program intended to support people who seek to improve their life style by means of changes in diet and physical activity. The program is currently under evaluation in a clinical study and the present study is a feasibility test of the LinkMedica-Heart Internet based program. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate LinkMedica-Heart, an Internet based program we designed for support and maintenance of patient-led life style...

BACKGROUND: Concerns over health information on the Internet have generated efforts to enhance credibility markers; yet how users actually assess the credibility of online health information is largely unknown. OBJECTIVE: This study set out to (1) establish a parsimonious and valid questionnaire instrument to measure credibility of Internet health information by drawing on various previous measures of source, news, and other credibility scales; and (2) to identify the effects of Web-site...

BACKGROUND: Adults with low literacy may encounter informational obstacles on the Internet when searching for health information, in part because most health Web sites require at least a high-school reading proficiency for optimal access. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to 1) determine how low-literacy adults independently access and evaluate health information on the Internet, 2) identify challenges and areas of proficiency in the Internet-searching skills of low-literacy...

BACKGROUND: Globally, half of all new HIV infections occur among young people. Despite this incidence, there is a profound lack of resources for HIV-positive youth. OBJECTIVE: To investigate Internet access, use and acceptability as a means for health promotion and health service delivery among HIV-positive youth. METHODS: A community-based participatory approach was used to conduct a mixed methods research study. Thirty-five qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted...

BACKGROUND: Studies suggest that there has been an increase in the use of the Internet by patients in many Western societies. However, despite the many texts available on health and the Internet, not much is known about how much patients actually use the Internet to look up health information in their daily lives. We know little about what meaning this activity has for their experience of health and illness, and for their relationship with health-care practitioners. OBJECTIVE: To explore...

BACKGROUND: The Internet is becoming an increasingly important resource for health-information seekers. However, consumers often do not use effective search strategies. Query reformulation is one potential intervention to improve the effectiveness of consumer searches. OBJECTIVE: We endeavored to answer the research question: "Does reformulating original consumer queries with preferred terminology from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus lead to better search returns?"...

African Americans with low incomes and low literacy levels disproportionately suffer poor health outcomes from many preventable diseases. Low functional literacy and low health literacy impede millions of Americans from successfully accessing health information. These problems are compounded for African Americans by cultural insensitivity in health materials. The Internet could become a useful tool for providing accessible health information to low-literacy and low-income African Americans....

An interdisciplinary clinical team is a consistent grouping of people from relevant clinical disciplines, ideally inclusive of the patient, whose interactions are guided by specific team functions and processes to achieve team-defined favorable patient outcomes. Teamwork supported by properly designed eHealth applications could help create more effective systems of care for chronic disease. Given its synchronous and asynchronous communication capacity and information-gathering and -sharing...