1997 Partnerships for Networked Consumer Health Information Conference

Summaries of Plenary Sessions and Breakout Sessions

The Promise and the Uncertainty of Networked Consumer Health Information

Wednesday, April 16, 1997
8:30-9:30 AM

Moderator: Lisa A. Simpson, MB, BCh, MPH, Acting Administrator, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Speaker: Vicki S. Freimuth, PhD, Associate Director for Communication, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Lessons Learned from Evaluations of Mass Mediated Health Campaigns"

Speaker: Jeanne Gleason, EdD, Executive Producer, New Mexico State University Video & Multimedia Studio, "The Power of Formative Evaluation"

Speaker: Shoshanna Sofaer, DrPH, Director, Center for Health Outcomes Improvement Research, George Washington University, "Assessing Information Interventions to Support Decisions"

Speaker: Holly Jimison, PhD, Director, Informed Patient Decisions Group, Oregon Health Sciences University, "Challenges and Potential for Evaluating Networked Consumer Health Interventions"

Statement of the Subject

The panel will describe the current state of the evidence and explore the difficulties associated with assessing the impact of networked CHI.

Key Issues

Networked consumer health information holds much promise to increase quality of care, improve communication between patients and between patients and providers, improve consumer satisfaction, and make it more likely that treatments conform to the benefits and harms of each individual patient.

But there is much we don’t know about making these goals a reality: (1) What are the dangers involved in the easy availability of health information—some based on evidence, and some not?; (2) What can we learn from past research in communications to help networked consumer health information realize its potential?; (3) What evaluations are occurring and which evaluation methods work?

Roles, Responsibilities, and Priorities

• Exploring the past evaluations of consumer health information, especially in printed form, and how these lessons apply to networked information.

• Examining the goals, promise, and outcomes of networked consumer health information, and how evaluations should be designed to address them.

• Meeting the needs of special populations.
• Problems in evaluating an area as dynamic as networked consumer health information.

Next Steps

Developing a coordinated research agenda to evaluate the rapidly evolving field of networked consumer health information.

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