Online psychoeducation: E-patients are looking for e-doctors

Abstract

Method

A website was designed to offer psychoeducation and advice to women who demand more information about health after traditional visit to GPs. A total of 564 patients visited the website in three months. Women asked for information and interacted with different topics on the platform. Only the women who completed all the form (age, previous diseases, current treatment) were analyzed. A total of 226 e-patients were included.

Results

The most demanded information was about: excess weight, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and the menopause although other topics related to medicine such as HTA, breast cancer, and pregnancy were part of the website contents.

Discussion

Even when many topics about medicine were available on the website, women were more interested in, and showed the need for information about mental health.

Online psychoeducation could help the clinician to save time at the personal consultation and could be especially useful in following the patient for a long time.

However, there are technological barriers and at least one first face-to-face interview is required in complicated cases to determine a correct diagnosis.

Conclusions

A high demand for e-mental online health education does exist. It would be useful for professionals to be trained in information technology in order to cover that demand and avoid misinforming patients.

It would be interesting to undertake a meta-analysis with all the studies around the world and determine the profile of the patient that could be helped through online attention.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.