Jax WWPP - Web info

Websites too complicated?

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:29:12 GMT

I was reading this article this morning. All the websites mentioned here are in the UK, but I was wondering how the questions raised in the article applies to the way websites for medical information are built in the U.S.? One thing I did notice is that all the sites are different. Each site requires learning new navigational information. There are no standard rules for presentation on the web. Would it not be better to find a way to optimize the presentation of certain types of information? Should there not be a medical group, in concert with a web design group, be working to create a "Roberts Rules of Order" for the presentation of medical information on the web. — Jack

BBC NEWS | Health | Diabetes websites too complicated:
Diabetes websites too complicated
Language used was beyond average comprehension

Online health advice for people with diabetes is often too complex to understand, analysis suggests.
A scientist at Bath University looked at pages about diabetes on 15 internet health sites run mainly by charities and official bodies. He found people would need a reading ability of an educated 11 to 17-year-old to understand the sites. However, he said the average reading age of people in the UK was equivalent to an educated nine-year-old.

Complicated language
Dr Maged Boulos from Bath University found the NHS Direct Online site was the hardest to understand. People would need the reading ability of an educated person aged 16 to comprehend information, he estimated. Other difficult sites were NetDoctor.co.uk, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation UK, and the British Diabetic Association which required a reading age of at least 15."

(Related link Diabetes UK.)
(Related link NHSdirect.)
(Related link netdoctor.co.uk.)
(Related link Juvenile Diabetes.)
(Related link Prodigy.Net.)
(Related link University College London Hospitals.)
(Related link BestTreatments.)

Medical Records May Go Online - Yahoo! News

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 11:37:04 GMT

Medical Records May Go Online
Mon Aug 23, 3:00 AM ET
Mark S. Sullivan, Medill News Service

This is the kind of story that may spark the imagination of some people. — Jack

It's five in the morning. You're in a hotel room having a serious allergic reaction to something you ate. Do you know where your medical records are?

If you're like most Americans, they're resting peacefully in a manila folder at your doctor's office. And the writing inside looks something like Sanskrit.

Someday, that information could be only a modem away--or closer, perhaps in a keychain drive in your luggage. The Bush administration has released a strategic plan for every U.S. citizen's health information to be stored in an "electronic health record" central database within ten years. Each person would have a "personal health record," an electronic file the individual would manage, that could exchange information with the EHR database.

The PHR would contain information on a person's insurance plan, prescriptions, allergies, medical history, and conditions such as asthma or diabetes."

(Via Yahoo! News.)

Wired News: Dragging Doctors to the Info Age

Fri, 18 Jun 2004 19:12:49 GMT

This is an article I found very interesting. I include an image of our site, because I think this is one of the things where we are leading with our concept for tomorrow.

Frustrated by the hospital industry's achingly slow adoption of basic technological safeguards, the Bush administration and Congress are gearing up to put more pressure on doctors and administrators. For perhaps a decade or more, however, millions of patients will continue to endure the high risk of deadly medical mistakes because there's no computer to catch the errors. Internal Revenue Service. Physicians can spend entire days without touching a keyboard, and nurses routinely track patients' progress through a series of handwritten notes passed from person to person. "It's this huge, ridiculous game of telephone," said surgeon Dr. Robert Wachter, co-author of a new book exploring why medical errors kill tens of thousands of Americans each year. More potential disaster looms on the medication front, where the "chicken scratch" on prescription forms often confuses pharmacists, who end up providing the wrong drugs and, in some cases, killing people.

Writing for the Web (Alertbox March 15, 1997)

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:38:07 GMT

This is another writer I respect. Jakob Nielsen is a well respected web usability guru. He writes a monthly article on various aspects of the web. This is an article from 1997 about writing for the web. I used this article to help teach my students in Denmark.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for March 15, 1997:

Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)
The three main guidelines for writing for the Web are:
Be succinct: write no more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication
Write for scannability: don't require users to read long continuous blocks of text Use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages

Short Texts
Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Even users who don't know this human factors research usually say that they feel unpleasant when reading online text. As a result, people don't want to read a lot of text from computer screens: you should write 50% less text and not just 25% less since it's not only a matter of reading speed but also a matter of feeling good. We also know that users don't like to scroll: one more reason to keep pages short.

The screen readability problem will be solved in the future, since screens with 300 dpi resolution have been invented and have been found to have as good readability as paper. High-resolution screens are currently too expensive (high-end monitors in commercial use have about 110 dpi), but will be available in a few years and common ten years from now.

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle

Tue, 24 Feb 2004 07:39:23 GMT

Marc asked me about some rules for writing.
My main focus is that a story should have three things, a beginning, a middle, and an end. It should start with a premise, contain justification, and then resolve. It is unnecessary that the resolutions be the expected conclusion.

But after that, I found this article. It is also useful to think about this article. This is just a very small start. Go to the article and there are 10 rules that may be helpful.

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle
Elmore's Rules of Writing
By ELMORE LEONARD ( Series ) 1170 words

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

We have updated our Frontier/Manila server

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 21:20:28 GMT

We have updated our Manila Software. This is good for all weblogs because the Manila server actually hosts the Radio Weblogs Radio Community Server, as well as all of the Manila Weblogs.

Many thanks to Marc Pierson and Tom Bromet, and Lori, and whoever else had a hand in its upgrading.

As we move forward, the developments in Manila 9.1 will give us some great new cross-platform browser editing tools.

BBC NEWS | Health | Beams cut need for cancer surgery

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 17:13:21 GMT

I noticed this took place in Seattle. I was wondering if any of the WWPP people got a chance to see any of this?

Beams cut need for cancer surgery Cancer cells can be selectively targeted Scientists are perfecting a 'virtual scalpel' which uses ultrasound beams to kill cancer cells without the need for surgery. Unlike radiotherapy and drugs, the technique also leaves healthy tissue next to a tumour undamaged. Preliminary trials in the UK and China show it is effective - and has fewer side effects than traditional treatment. Details were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Seattle. Read the entire article -> BBC article