![]() ![]() ![]() Since its launch in 1996 over 300,000 visits have been logged at the main AIDA Website-over 60,000 copies of the AIDA program have been downloaded free-of-charge. It has been made freely available, without charge, on the Internet as a noncommercial contribution to continuing diabetes education. AIDA permits the interactive simulation of plasma insulin and blood glucose profiles for teaching, demonstration, self-learning, and research purposes. The purpose of this column is to overview a proof-of-concept semi-automated analysis about why people are downloading the latest version of the AIDA educational diabetes program. ![]() In previous "Diabetes Information Technology & WebWatch" columns various indicators of usage of the AIDA program have been reviewed, and various comments from users of the software have been documented. 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. Given this, it is proposed to repeat the current pilot survey approach on a routine basis, in the future, as a way of monitoring on-going usage of the AIDA Website.ĪIDA is a diabetes-computing program freely available at on the Web. These analyses have been informative and useful. The results also confirm those of previous audits based on different self-reported methodologies, confirming, amongst other things, what countries people are visiting from and what operating systems/computers they are using. The study has yielded an interesting insight into how the AIDA Website is being used. For the initial pilot study the analysis was performed from Octoto November 1, 2001. For the current study we have reviewed anonymous logstats data, which are automatically collected at many Websites, to try and establish a baseline level of usage for the AIDA site. As these programs do not require visitors to do anything special, over time some interesting insights into Website usage may be obtained. There are various programs that can monitor what pages visitors are viewing at a site. One aspect of learning as much as possible about diabetes Website visitors and users may be to apply techniques that do not necessitate any visitor or user interaction. However, a recurring observation is that data collection is easiest if it is as unobtrusive and innocuous as possible. The rationale for this work is that, in this way, it should be possible to improve the program as well as tailor future versions of the software to the interests and needs of its users. To answer these types of questions we have been conducting a series of audits/surveys via the AIDA Website, and via the software program itself, to learn as much as possible about who the AIDA end users really are. In this respect we have been keen to understand in general terms: (1) why people are turning to the Web for health-care/diabetes information (2) more specifically, what sort of people are making use of the AIDA software and (3) what benefits they feel might accrue from using the program. One aspect of AIDA, though, that has been of considerable interest has been to investigate its Web-based distribution as a wider paradigm for more general medically related usage of the Internet. 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. AIDA is a diabetes-computing program freely available from on the Web. ![]()
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