Telephone technical support: an essential adjunct to a computer intervention for rural chronically ill women

The purposes of this article are to describe the telephone technical support system used in the Women to Women support and health education computer outreach project for chronically ill rural women, discuss the preparation and role of the information systems specialist, and examine the nature and quality of telephone support requested and received. Telephone support records were tallied and categorized to determine the number of participants requiring assistance and the nature of problems described. The quality of telephone support received was assessed through a postintervention mail survey. About one third of participants sought telephone support, most frequently for problems related to impaired Internet service provider delivery and the university's Web-application platform. The quality of telephone support was rated highly by 96% of respondents. It was concluded that telephone technical support is a useful adjunct to a computer-based intervention and that quality support can be provided by including a competent information systems specialist on the research team.