Designing and Evaluating an Educational Website for Osteoarthritis

Using educational websites can be effective in enhancing the health-related knowledge of patients suffering from osteoarthritis. This study aimed to design and evaluate an educational website to improve the awareness of patients with osteoarthritis. This is a descriptive-applied study. Having reviewed valid scientific articles retrieved from Medline (through PubMed), Scopus, and Google Scholar databases, the contents required for the website were identified and classified. Then, the scientific content extracted from the articles was evaluated by general physicians and Ph.D. of physical medicine and rehabilitation. Different sections of the website were designed by "Google sites," and the content was published. In the last stage of the research, the osteoarthritis educational website was evaluated by students of medicine and health information technology in terms of technical performance by a standard questionnaire. In this study, an educational website was designed to educate patients with osteoarthritis. Users can log in to the website and learn about symptoms, consequences, predisposing factors, pain relief exercises, nutritional information, and self-care programs. The content provided on the website includes three main sections of general disease information, clinical information, and disease self-care information, which physicians evaluated in the first phase. According to the content evaluation results extracted from the studies and the questionnaire's analysis, the designed website had a good quality. The average scores of the questions related to website usability, screen capabilities, terminology and information, learning ability, and overall website capability were 7.79, 8.15, 8.4, 8.08, and 8.03, respectively, which were at a "good" level. At the end of this research an educational website for osteoarthritis was created. Patients can access the site via the link and receive educational information about symptoms, consequences, predisposing factors, exercises to reduce pain, self-care, and nutritional information.