Customizing Online Education For Cardiac Patients

There are many opportunities for the use of online educational methods outside of settings such as schools, universities, and corporate training programs. One particularly promising area of application for online education is healthcare, where it may promote a more informed use of the healthcare system and beneficial lifestyle changes in populations affected by chronic illness. Our focus in this paper will be online training to promote beneficial lifestyle changes in the chronically ill. This population is typically elderly and with fewer computer skills. Is online education a suitable delivery method? If it is, how should it be structured? This paper describes the requirements analysis involving this patient population and the resulting design of an online educational strategy. It is anticipated that many of the issues raised in this paper should also be relevant to other online training applications. Subsequent research will assess the effectiveness of the proposed interventions.