Lack of Development and Usability Descriptions in Evaluation Reports on Online Health Information Tools for Older Patients

Abstract

New media play an increasing role in the everyday life of older individuals. They extensively use the Internet to search for health-related information. In our systematic review we found that online health information tools have been proven to be effective in improving self-efficacy and several clinical outcomes in older (≥65 years) patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the development and usability of the effective online health information tools. The reporting of the development of the online health information tools turned out to be too succinct. Moreover, we were unable to evaluate the usability of online health information tools as none of them were publicly available. We argue the need to report more detailed information about the development and usability of online health information tools in evaluation studies in order to replicate findings and to develop new evidence-based online health information tools for older patients.