Background: Personally controlled health records (PCHRs) are accessible over the Internet and allow individuals to maintain and manage a secure copy of their medical data. These records provide a new opportunity to provide customized health recommendations to individuals based on their record content. Health promotion programs using PCHRs can potentially be used in a variety of settings and target a large range of health issues. Objectives: The aim was to assess the value of a PCHR in an...

Background: For most individuals, long-term maintenance of weight loss requires long-term, supportive intervention. Internet-based weight loss maintenance programs offer considerable potential for meeting this need. Careful design processes are required to maximize adherence and minimize attrition. Objective: This paper describes the development, implementation and use of a Web-based intervention program designed to help those who have recently lost weight sustain their weight loss over 1...

Background: The World Wide Web has increasingly become an important source of information in health care consumer decision making.However, little is known about whether searching online resources actually improves consumers’ understanding of health issues. Objectives: The aim was to study whether searching on the World Wide Web improves consumers’ accuracy in answering health questions and whether consumers’ understanding of health issues is subject to further change under social...

Background: Developers of health information websites aimed at consumers need methods to assess whether their website is of “high quality.” Due to the nature of complementary medicine, website information is diverse and may be of poor quality. Various methods have been used to assess the quality of websites, the two main approaches being (1) to compare the content against some gold standard, and (2) to rate various aspects of the site using an assessment tool. Objective: We aimed to...

Background: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), realized the need to better understand its Web users in order to help assure that websites are user friendly and well designed for effective information dissemination. A trans-NIH group proposed a trans-NIH project to implement an online customer survey, known as the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey, on a large number of NIH websites—the first “enterprise-wide” ACSI...

Background: Provision of online evidence at the point of care is one strategy that could provide clinicians with easy access to up-to-date evidence in clinical settings in order to support evidence-based decision making. Objective: The aim was to determine long-term use of an online evidence system in routine clinical practice. Methods: This was a prospective cohort study; 59 clinicians who had a computer with Internet access in their consulting room participated in a 12-month trial of...

Background: Self-help therapies are often effective in reducing mental health problems. We developed a new Web-based self-help intervention based on problem-solving therapy, which may be used for people with different types of comorbid problems: depression, anxiety, and work-related stress. Objective: The aim was to study whether a Web-based self-help intervention is effective in reducing depression, anxiety, and work-related stress (burnout). Methods: A total of 213 participants were...

Background: Smoking is more prevalent among lower-income individuals and certain racial/ethnic minorities. Addressing tobacco cessation among diverse populations is an urgent public health priority. As Internet use continues to rise among all segments of the US population, Web-based interventions have enormous potential to reach priority populations. Conducting Web-based smoking cessation research in priority populations requires psychometrically sound measurement instruments. To date, only...