Preliminary experience with the Internet release of AIDA—an interactive educational diabetes simulator

Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics

2002

The purpose of this paper is to report a pilot survey about why people are downloading the AIDA interactive educational diabetes simulator. AIDA is a diabetes computer program that permits the interactive simulation of plasma insulin and blood glucose profiles for teaching, demonstration, and self-learning purposes. It has been made freely available, without charge, on the Internet as a noncommercial contribution to continuing diabetes education. Since its launch in 1996 well over 200,000 visits have been logged at the main AIDA Websitewww.2aida.org-and over 40,000 copies of the AIDA program have been downloaded freeof-charge. This article documents a pilot survey of comments left by Website visitors while they were downloading the AIDA software, before they had a chance to actually use the program. The overall paradigm adopted for this study has endeavored to establish why people are resorting to the Internet to obtain diabetes information. Specific intended goals of the study were: (1) to demonstrate ongoing use of the World Wide Web for surveying diabetes software users by obtaining their free-text comments; (2) to identify what sort of things people were planning to do with the AIDA software simulator; and (3) to more generally gain some insight into why people are turning to the Web for healthcare-related information. The Internet-based survey methodology was found to be robust and reliable. Over an 8-month period (from February 2, 2001 to October 1, 2001) 642 responses were received. During the corresponding period 2,248 actual visits were made to the Website survey page-giving a response rate to this pilot study of 28.6%. Responses were received from participants in over 56 countries-although over half of these (n 5 343; 53.4%) originated from the United States and United Kingdom. Two hundred forty-four responses (38.0%) were received from patients with diabetes, and 73 (11.4%) from relatives of patients, with fewer responses from doctors, students, diabetes educators, nurses, pharmacists, and other end users. This pilot survey has confirmed the feasibility of using the Internet to obtain free-text comments, at no real cost, from a large number of medical software downloaders/users. The survey has also offered a valuable insight into why members of the public are turning to the Internet for medical information. Furthermore it has provided useful information about why people are actually downloading the AIDA interactive educational "virtual diabetes patient" simulator. 793

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See 2 more Smart Citations

Why Are People Downloading the Freeware AIDA Diabetes Computing Software Program: A Pilot Study

Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics

2002

“…Further copies have been made available, in the past, on diskette by the system developers. The AIDA software and its use have been described previously in this journal, 1 as well as elsewhere in the literature. 2 In previous articles, and Diabetes Information Technology & WebWatch columns, various indicators of usage of AIDA have also been reviewed, [3][4][5] and various comments from users of the software have been documented.…”

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British Diabetic Association Review of the AIDA v4 Diabetes Software Simulator Program

Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics

2004

AIDA is a diabetes-computing program freely available from www.2aida.org on the Web. The software is intended to serve as an educational support tool, and can be used by anyone who has an interest in diabetes, whether they be patients, relatives, health-care professionals, or students. In 1996, during the beta-testing phase of the AIDA v4 project, the British Diabetic Association (BDA)-now called Diabetes UK-was approached and offered the AIDA software by the author, without charge, as a noncommercial contribution to continuing diabetes education. The BDA undertook their own independent assessment of the program, which involved distributing AIDA to a panel of potential end-users (health-care professionals and patients). Comments were solicited regarding the utility, clarity, and perceived safety of the software from users outside the BDA, as well as from various internal assessors. As a result of the feedback, a decision was taken by the BDA to offer AIDA to health-care professionals through the BDA's health-care professional brochure. One thousand copies of the software were produced on diskette, and 1,000 copies of the BDA's version of the program's user guide-printed as a small book-were made available for distribution by post. In this Diabetes Information Technology & WebWatch column an overview is given of the anonymous feedback provided to the BDA by some of the external evaluators. Looking back, nearly 8 years after the launch of AIDA, it is interesting to review some of the comments received and compare these with what has actually happened with the software. To date over 400,000 visits have been logged at the AIDA Web pages, and over 80,000 copies of the program have been downloaded free-of-charge. It is highlighted that this widespread downloading of, and interest in, the AIDA software seems to largely have been fuelled by the program's free availability on the Internet. The use of the World Wide Web to enhance the distribution of other medical (diabetes) programs is highlighted.

Computer‐assisted Diabetes Education and Information Technology in Diabetes Care

International Textbook of Diabetes Mellitus

2004

This chapter overviews current applications of the use of information technology (IT) in clinical diabetes care and diabetes education. The main topics covered include (i) database systems (personal applications as well as hospital‐based systems and electronic patient records); (ii) computer‐based decision support (making use of algorithms, knowledge‐based systems, and telemedcine‐based prototypes); (iii) educational applications (including the use of simulators, games for children with diabetes, and CD‐ROM‐based diabetes teaching). Other topics addressed include obstacles to computerization, diabetes and the World Wide Web, and software evaluation. The chapter concludes that while there have been many computer prototypes developed in the field of diabetes‐IT, to date there have been relatively few successful products or applications. Reasons for this are discussed, and the need for much more rigorous program evaluation is highlighted. The chapter closes with a look to the future of possible applications of IT in clinical diabetes care.