Illness stories on the Internet: Features of websites disclosing breast cancer patients’ illness stories in the Dutch language

ObjectiveTo examine the way in which breast cancer patients’ illness stories in the Dutch language are disclosed on the Internet.MethodsWebsites containing Dutch illness stories written by breast cancer patients were selected using a search engine on the Internet. A checklist was developed based on a theoretical framework for analysing communication processes in order to examine the selected websites.ResultsNone of the websites implements search facilities based on either the content of an illness story, or the personal features of the author. A minority of the websites offers information about the illness stories, such as author's genuineness and editor's review.ConclusionThe Internet's opportunities are not fully utilized with respect to disclosing breast cancer patients’ illness stories.Practice implicationsIn order to support a patient in finding appropriate illness stories in the diverse set of available stories, we are in the process of developing an application that combines symbolic and statistical natural language analysis techniques to facilitate content-based retrieval.