BackgroundCurrent advances in information and communication technology have made accessing and obtaining health-related information easier than ever before. Today, many hospital websites use a patient-centric approach to promote engagement and encourage learning for better health-related decision making. However, little is known about the current state of hospital websites in the State of Kuwait. This study aims to evaluate hospital websites in Kuwait and offer recommendations to improve patient engagement and access to health information.MethodsThis study employs a cross-sectional analytical approach to evaluate hospital websites in Kuwait in 2017. The websites of hospitals that provide in-patient services were identified through a structured search. Only active websites that were available in either English or Arabic were considered. The evaluation of the websites involved a combination of automated and expert- based evaluation methods and was performed across four dimensions: Accessibility, Usability, Presence, and Content.ResultsNine hospitals met the inclusion criteria. Most of the websites fell short in all four dimensions. None of the websites passed the accessibility guidelines. The usability of websites varied between hospitals. Overall, the majority of hospitals in Kuwait have rudimentary online presence and their websites require careful reassessment with respect to design, content, and user experience. The websites focus primarily on promoting services provided by the hospital rather than engaging and communicating with patients or providing evidence-based information.ConclusionsHealthcare organization and website developers should follow best-practices to improve their websites taking into consideration the quality, readability, objectivity, coverage and currency of the information as well as the design of their websites. Hospitals should leverage social media to gain outreach and better engagement with consumers. The websites should be offered in additional languages commonly spoken by people living in Kuwait. Efforts should be made to ensure that health information on hospital websites are evidence-based and checked by healthcare professionals.
In applications such as architecture, early design sketches containing accurate line drawings often mislead the target audience [Schumann et al., 1996]. Approximate human-drawn sketches are typically accepted as a better way of demonstrating fundamental design concepts. To this end we have designed an algorithm that creates lines that perceptually resemble human-drawn lines. Our algorithm works directly with input point data and a physicallybased mathematical model of human arm movement. Our algorithm generates unique lines of arbitrary length given the end points of a line, without relying on a database of humandrawn lines. We found that an observational analysis obtained through various user studies of human lines made a bigger impact on the algorithm than a statistical analysis. Additional studies have shown that the algorithm produces lines that are perceptually indistinguishable from that of a hand-drawn straight pencil line. A further expansion to the system resulted in mimicked dashed lines.
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