WWW/Internet - Portal do Software Público Brasileiro

IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010HEALTH 2.0 IN PRACTICE: A REVIEW OF GERMANHEALTH CARE WEB PORTALSRoland Görlitz, Benjamin Seip, Asarnusch Rashid and Valentin ZachariasFZI Forschungszentrum Informatik,Karlsruhe, GermanyABSTRACTContemporary studies show that the usage of health-related web portals increases continuously. Additionally, theinternet’s usage is in a transition towards more user participation by allowing more and more user generated content. Inthe area of health care this development is commonly called health 2.0; a development that leads more patients anddoctors to actively participate and contribute on health portals their virtual communities. This results in numerousopportunities for health care providers to capitalize on online health communities.In order to aid the understanding of this emerging trend, this paper presents an extensive analysis of up-to-date Germanweb portals that provide health-related content from a user perspective. They are classified as well as clustered accordingto their characteristics regarding usage of web 2.0 technologies and health care specialization. With this clusteredoverview of the current health care web portals this paper tries to clarify the term health 2.0. Additionally, general designoptions for health care portals are drawn from the analyzed web portals and state-of-the-art literature to aid in thedevelopment of new health care portals.KEYWORDSHealth 2.0, Medicine 2.0, e-Health, health care, virtual community, review1. INTRODUCTIONWith emerging new technologies and applications the use of the internet changed drastically in the course ofthe past decade giving rise to the term “Web 2.0” (O'Reilly, 2007). In the frame of web 2.0, many derivateshave appeared, for example music 2.0, enterprise 2.0, science 2.0, health 2.0 and medicine 2.0. The latter twoare found to be denoted very similar and both terms are generally attributed to eHealth, which already poppedup in the context of telemedicine in the year 2000 (Hughes et al., 2008, Mitchell, 2000). It is usedinconsistently and unfortunately there is no clear definition, but due to the strong influence of the internet, itsconception is gradually shifting to health care practices based upon usage of telecommunication and internet.Nevertheless, eHealth, in contrast to medicine 2.0 and health 2.0, does not imply collaboratively generatingand utilizing content. In particular, health 2.0 is characterized by an interactive information sharing and usercentereddesign. Nevertheless, it is not defined what extent of user-centered design health 2.0 generallyimplies.According to contemporary studies, the use of health-related web portals increases continuously. Due toadvancing health 2.0, the user generated content (UCG) is becoming more and more important (Kummervoldet al., 2008). This offers numerous chances, because the doctor is an expert in identifying a disease, but thepatient is an expert in experiencing it. In this context there are many publications that discuss the influence ofthe internet on medical practice in general and on individual consumers focusing on information quality, trustand acceptance. Furthermore, there are studies that focus on social interaction and benefits of crowd sourcingin health care. However, there are no publications that review and analyze health-related web portals’utilization of web 2.0 technologies and virtual communities, thus the importance of user generated content intheir business model.This paper presents a broad review of German health-related web portals. The range of incorporatedsocial media is analyzed from a user perspective and they are clustered according to their degree ofspecialization in health care and potential interaction between users. Due to this two-dimensional49