A web-based patient education system and self-help group in Persian language for inflammatory bowel disease patients

To study the use patterns of a Persian web-based patient education system for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients in Iran.

A web-based patient education system was developed with Persian content in three sections: general, ulcerative colitis (UC), and Crohn's disease (CD). The website included a forum for patients to communicate as a self-help group. A customized web tracking system recorded web use statistics. Polls at the bottom of each page collected the visitors' opinion on the extent of helpfulness and readability of page contents. Web use data were analyzed for an 18-month period from October 2004 to April 2006.

Having excluded page visits from search engine robots, the website's homepage was visited 4452 times (mean of monthly visits: 234, range: 102-330). The web pages titled Anatomy of gastrointestinal system, Nutrition in IBD, Diagnostic tests, How to cope with IBD, and IBD in women were the most favorite in general section. The web page titled IBD treatment was the most visited in both CD and UC sections followed by the web pages on cause of disease, diagnostic procedures and complications in CD section; and those titled symptoms, cause of disease and risk factors in the UC section. Overall, the content evaluation polls received 294 hits (from 186 unique visitors) of which, 196 (67%) were from patients, 30 (10%) from patients' relatives/friends, 21 (7%) from doctors, and 47 (16%) from other groups. During the 18-month period, 47 patients registered in the self-help forum, 24 threads were opened, and 97 posts (33 in CD and 64 in UC section) were sent.

Considering the increasing trend of Internet use in developing countries like Iran, and the consequent increase in the proportion of Internet-using patients, and finally the time constraints gastroenterologists face answering patients' questions; similar websites seem to be effective ways of patient education in close future.