Dear all,

We are a research team in Health Informatics at City University, London and we are looking for participants to take part in some pilot research for a PhD project.

My PhD project is about learning about diabetes using collaborative web technology and we have created a prototype called CareNet that we now need to test.

For the successful implementation of internet based social networks for diabetes education, it is essential to find out which aspects of the system are most important to users and how successful such a system can be. I am carrying out this research to measure these factors.

This research will last until September 2010 and researchers are asking participants to use this system for at least six months. The last date for recruitment would be the end of May 2010.

The inclusion criteria for this research is anyone with diabetes aged between 10 to 30 years old.

For an information sheet and to register your interest in this study please contact me via my email address (omid.shabestari.1@soi.city.ac.uk).

> The inclusion criterion for this research is anyone with diabetes aged between 10 to 30 years old.

Do you have any evidence to justify your apparent implication that nobody over the age of 30 is able to learn about diabetes?  

Could you not, as an alternative bias, propose excluding all men, or all Type 2 diabetics, from your survey?

If I were your PhD examiner, these would be my first questions...!

The inclusion criteria for this research is anyone with diabetes aged between 10 to 30 years old.

and for that reason....


I am out.

What a strange age restriction.

I've learned most of what I know from people well over 30, including people who have had diabetes for over 50 years.  

Is this some kind of mechanism where diabetics are not supposed to learn anything from each other, just by rote from the materials provided only?  Its a very odd kind of collaboration if people are excluded on the basis of age and by its very nature completely divorced from reality.

Quoted Text

For the successful implementation of internet based social networks for diabetes education, it is essential to find out which aspects of the system are most important to users and how successful such a system can be.

Excuse me for asking, but isn't this forum an internet based social network for diabetes education?  I would say it's modestly successful (according to the members and Dr Debbie Keeling) so it must have the aspects people require,  so why re-invent the wheel?

I was older than 30 when I was diagnosed!

Me too lib

AND I agree with everything else said - I was over 50 when I started learning about this inconvenience called diabetes, this forum is all that I need

Dear all,

Many thanks for your valuable comments.

The reason for inclusion criteria mentioned in this study was the current trend of diabetes toward younger people and increased incidence in this group.
The people older than 30 are welcome to use this system and gain benefit from it. But according to initial inclusion criteria, we cannot include them in final analysis of the results for my dissertation.
I completely agree that this forum is a successful environment and the number of replies that I have received in such a short time exactly highlights this success.
The difference between this forum and the environment that we are planning to evaluate is in two aspects:
1.     We use a matrix model to do the requirement engineering for future models of collaborative networks in health care which is somehow different with the current systems.
2.     There is an appraisal model implemented in our project which helps to highlight the most appreciated contribution of system users.


Best regards,
Omid Shabestari M.D.

Quoted from Omid

1.     We use a matrix model to do the requirement engineering for future models of collaborative networks in health care which is somehow different with the current systems.
2.     There is an appraisal model implemented in our project which helps to highlight the most appreciated contribution of system users.

Interesting.  Something similar to point #2 came up last week:
http://diabetes-support.org.uk/forum/Blah.pl?b-gb/m-1261142016/
Some of the drawbacks are discussed in that thread.  Might be of use to you.

Regarding point 1, we have discussed around this area many times and one of the prevailing areas of discussion is the value of having a collaborative network (such as a forum) which is not official.  Have a read around and you'll pick up a lot of negativity about medical professionals, particularly undertrained nurses, misguided GPs but most of all dietitians (and not just from me).  A lot of advice given out by medical professionals in particular is counterproductive and can be empirically disproved by the individual, as we find here all the time.

Those who seem to derive the most success, particularly type 2 diabetics, appear to do so by doing precisely the opposite of the advice from their medical team.

So if a forum or other form of collaborative site is official, this presents a problem.  The official line is wrong in many areas and a collaborative network of any sort which is run by an organisation which supports the official line may be branded a success for being popular with its users, but has the potential to be ineffective at best and extremely counterproductive at worst.

I think this is mentioned in the upcoming study from Dr Keeling at Manchester Uni, although perhaps not quite in those terms.

Quoted Text

My PhD project is about learning about diabetes using collaborative web technology and we have created a prototype called CareNet that we now need to test.

Precisely what is it you want to learn? There is no quick solution to be gained by using a machine to do all the work and my guess is that in the end all you will end up with is a similarly flawed model to the one used by the medical profession now.

Quoted Text

For the successful implementation of internet based social networks for diabetes education, it is essential to find out which aspects of the system are most important to users and how successful such a system can be. I am carrying out this research to measure these factors.

Well that is simples:

Most important to users - viable information offered by the experience of many people based upon trial and error which the user tailors to him/herself according to their own circumstance. Offered free with no ulterior motive than to help others.

Successful - compared to what? Current circumstances? Everyone who come to a forum like this one does so out of need. Everyone who comes to a forum like this one, gains something that does help them in the real world, no matter what that something is. Friendship, support, camaraderie, honesty of motive are only a few things to describe what we all know and what makes it a success.

Diabetes and the persons situation is very individual and is so in so many ways. It is simply a case of 'one size does not fit all' and in my opinion attempts to follow that old route [because it is easier]  fail the majority.

I wish you luck in your endeavor - genuinely - but would place money on the outcome not being as envisaged.

The words 'Invent' and 'Wheel' spring to mind.

Best Wishes

AA

Quoted Text

The difference between this forum and the environment that we are planning to evaluate is in two aspects:
1.     We use a matrix model to do the requirement engineering for future models of collaborative networks in health care which is somehow different with the current systems.
2.     There is an appraisal model implemented in our project which helps to highlight the most appreciated contribution of system users.

Sorry and I'm not trying in any way to be funny or critical, but what does that actually mean in words of one syllable, understandable by the layman?  I have always thought that I have a pretty good grasp of the English language and a vocabulary that is well above average, but I simply don't understand those two statements.  I qualify that, I can more or less understand the second but the first?

Voting buttons, Patti

Oh?
Well... how helpful that must be.

This just sounds like one of these pointless research projects based around buzzwords and current trendy topics tbh social networks don't have the facilities that a customized website like this one or many other diabetes websites have.

Patti

Surely you must know that to be accepted  research projects must be clothed in the now-current impenetrable management and sociological jargon?  Intelligibility to even intelligent human beings who don't use the correct jargon is entirely irrelevant...

You might like this very old response to a jargon-ridden article:

Cutting out Jargon
While Dr Paul Ellis's forward-looking meaningful ongoing software overview (CW February 3) is welcome for its perceptive evaluation of the anticipated middle-future non-structured lifestyle environment, his projected scenario will engender a profoundly gloomy reaction among those of us who manifest a judgmental preference for the evolution of non-jargon-oriented communicative interactive relationships, for we are clearly in a strictly non-viable wish-fulfilment situation cliche elimination-wise.
C. M. Pearson                  (Computer Weekly, c 17FEB82)