Patient Education in a Networked Multimedia Environment

(MSc Dissertation)

Narinder Kaur

Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory,
School of Computing & Mathematics,
University of Teesside, UK

This project explores the applicability of a multimedia teaching program for female patients that are suffering from incontinence. The overall aim of the project is to discover whether the system can help patients achieve a greater understanding of their condition and their treatment options, and so, enable them to make well-informed decisions about their own health. It is hoped that it will also help to reduce the contact time between patients and consultants and lead to more constructive conversations between the two groups involved.

The project first examines the current patient education practice at South Cleveland Hospital and then designs a multimedia application to fit in with that practice. The application has been created using Microsoft’s FrontPage 97 web authoring tool. It uses Active Server Pages and JavaScript in order to connect HTML forms to a database and return results. The project uses the ‘waterfall’ methodology although the design and implementation steps are based on incremental prototyping.

During the formative evaluation phase of the system development, ‘expert users’ were employed in order to provide critical feedback relating to the quality and usability of the end-user interfaces. The final summative evaluation of the system was conducted using 6 patients and 3 consultants. This involved them in using the program and subsequently completing questionnaires.

The research results suggest that patient education using a multimedia environment is a viable possibility. The patients indicated that they benefited from using the system and the consultants suggested that it could usefully reduce contact time with their patients.