Journal
JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH
Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
JMIR PUBLICATIONS, INC
DOI: 10.2196/jmir.6.1.e3
Keywords
multimedia software; multimedia; software; prostate cancer; patient education; treatment decision making; treatment; decision making
Funding
- NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE [P30CA006927, R21CA090904] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NCI NIH HHS [CA90904-02, P30 CA006927, R21 CA090904, CA6136-05, CA06927] Funding Source: Medline
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Background: A cancer diagnosis is highly distressing. Yet, to make informed treatment choices patients have to learn complicated disease and treatment information that is often fraught with medical and statistical terminology. Thus, patients need accurate and easy-to-understand information. Objective: To introduce the development and preliminary evaluation through focus groups of a novel highly-interactive multimedia-education software program for patients diagnosed with localized prostate cancer. Methods: The prostate interactive education system uses the metaphor of rooms in a virtual health center (ie, reception area, a library, physician offices, group meeting room) to organize information. Text information contained in the library is tailored to a person's information-seeking preference (ie, high versus low information seeker). We conducted a preliminary evaluation through 5 separate focus groups with prostate cancer survivors (N = 18) and their spouses (N = 15). Results: Focus group results point to the timeliness and high acceptability of the software among the target audience. Results also underscore the importance of a guide or tutor who assists in navigating the program and who responds to queries to facilitate information retrieval. Conclusions: Focus groups have established the validity of our approach and point to new directions to further enhance the user interface.
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