With every best wish,
--Maged N Kamel Boulos

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WARNING OVER ONLINE ADVICE FOR DIABETICS

Date : 08.09.04

A New report has claimed people with diabetes could be suffering unnecessarily because they do not understand online information. Researchers at the University of Bath have looked at some of the main websites people turn to for diabetes information and found them too hard to understand. Now they are warning of potential 'serious consequences' for patients who are not finding the help they need. Dr Maged Boulos, of the University of Bath's School for Health, says the language of the diabetes pages of the NHS Direct Online site can only be understood by people whose reading ability is well beyond that of the average UK citizen. He looked at pages about diabetes on 15 internet health sites, run mainly by charities and official bodies. Dr Boulos said: "Sizeable proportions of Western populations have limited language and maths skills, making it difficult for them to fully and safely understand and act upon online health information. "Public and patient health information that is difficult to understand or liable to misunderstanding by the lay consumer could result in serious consequences. "Much of the currently available online consumer information on diabetes needs considerable re-writing to match the general reading level of the UK population." The estimated average reading age of a UK adult is nine years, but Dr Boulos found that people would need the reading ability of an educated person aged between 11 and 16.8 years old to understand many of the sites. The hardest of the 15 sites to understand was the NHS Direct Online site, needing a reading age of an educated person aged 16.8 years, but other difficult sites were NetDoctor.co.uk (15.2 years), the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, UK (15.8) and the British Diabetic Association (14.9). Dr Dan Rutherford, medical director of Net Doctor, said its information on diabetes had recently been re-written and is due to go live on the internet in a few weeks. A Department of Health spokesman said: "We try to make all our information as easy to understand as possible and are happy to listen to constructive criticism on how we could improve it." Sites identified as having a readability score that was close to the reading ability of the average Briton were NHS Prodigy, University College London Hospitals NHS Trust and BestTreatments. Dr Boulos recommends that health providers consider other means of getting health information to the public, such as face-to-face education and videos. The study used the generally accepted Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formulae to test the readability of documents. Dr Boulos was the author of a recent study that showed that the NHS needed to hire 5,200 more dentists to bring its dental services up to the standard of other western countries. l.matless@...

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07/09/04 - Health news section

Many diabetes sufferers cannot understand health advice given on an NHS website, according to a new study published.

The language of the diabetes pages of the NHS Direct Online site can only be understood by people whose reading ability is well beyond that of the average UK citizen, the study revealed.

But the average reading age of UK citizens is that of an average educated nine-year-old child, according to the report by Dr Maged Boulos, of Bath University, creating the potential for "serious consequences" if the information is misunderstood.

Dr Boulos looked at pages about diabetes on 15 internet health sites run mainly by charities and official bodies.

He concluded that the NHS Direct Online site was the hardest to understand. He stated that people would need the reading ability of an educated person aged 16 to comprehend information.

Other difficult sites were NetDoctor.co.uk and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, UK, which both required a reading age of at least 15.

Sites with readability scores closer to the ability of the average Briton were NHS Prodigy, University College London Hospitals NHS Trust and BestTreatments.

Dr Boulos said: "Sizeable proportions of Western populations have limited language and maths skills making it difficult for them to fully and safely understand and act upon online health information.

"Public and patient health information that is difficult to understand or liable to misunderstanding by the lay consumer could result in serious consequences."

He warned that much online information on diabetes needed "considerable re-writing" to match the general reading level of the UK population.