Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of an Internet-based patient education intervention, which was designed upon principles of personalization and participatory design.
Methods: Fifteen months after the first release of the website, 209 fibromyalgia patients recruited through health professionals completed an online questionnaire to assess patients' use of the website, health knowledge, self-management behavior, and health outcomes. These constructs were combined into an a-priory model that was tested using a structural equation modeling approach.
Results: Results show that the usage of certain tools of the website - designed and personalized involving the end users - impacts patients' health knowledge, which in turn impacts self-management. Improvements in self-management ultimately lower the impact of Fibromyalgia Syndrome leading to better health outcomes.
Conclusion: This study empirically confirmed that the adoption of a participatory approach to the design of eHealth interventions and the use of personalized contents enhance the overall effectiveness of systems.
Practice implications: More time and effort should be invested in involving patients in the preliminary phases of the development of Internet-based patient education interventions and in the definition of models that can guide the systems' evaluation beyond technology-related variables such as usability, accessibility or adoption.
Keywords: Fibromyalgia Syndrome; Internet; Patient education; Theory-driven evaluation; eHealth.
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