Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 8, 2026
A Point-of-Care Method with Integrated Decision Support Tool to Estimate Anemia at Population Level
Published on: January 19, 2024
Web-based mentorship resources for improving access to abortion information in Canada: a utilisation and reach
Parita Mehta1, Wendy V Norman2, Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai3
1Department of Neuroscience, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Background:
Abortion is a critical health service in Canada, yet access to evidence-based healthcare professional information remains limited. Our team developed a registration-based web platform in 2018, and subsequently an open-access platform in 2024 as an enhancement. The goal of these platforms was to disseminate reliable abortion-related healthcare professional information. This study examined the reach and utilisation of these platforms to assess their impact on improving access to evidence-based abortion information.
Methods:
We analysed secondary data extracted from the two web-based platforms. We calculated the total subscribers and analysed the user-posted queries in the registration-based platforms. We also calculated the active users, page-level access statistics, average session duration, and resource download counts in the open-access platform.
Results:
The registration-based platform (2018-2025) gained 1778 subscribers over 7 years, while the open-access platform (2024-2025) reached 1379 active users in just 1 year. The use of the registration-based platform was limited to Canada, whereas the open-access website attracted both Canadian (86.9%) and international users (13.1%). The registration-based platform generated 260 user queries across 10 thematic areas, primarily from medical doctors and nurse practitioners. On the open-access platform, users spent an average of 2 minutes per visit and viewed about 4.1 pages.
Conclusions:
Our analysis shows that while the open-access platform was accessible to a broad range of providers, it did not facilitate clinical queries or active engagement. This limits opportunities for providers to seek expert advice beyond the information available on the platform. Although integrating interactive features into open-access abortion platforms currently raises privacy and security concerns, future technological advancements may enable safe and confidential provider interactions in such settings.
