The potential of the Internet for health communication: The use of an interactive on-line tool for diabetes risk prediction

ObjectiveThe aim of the study is to assess the use of a web-based tool to calculate the 5-year risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus, the German Diabetes Risk Score (DRS), in a real-life setting.MethodsRecorded web server log information and user entered data (n = 24,495) was analyzed. To distinguish information seeking behavior between high- and low-risk DRS records, a sub-sample was created to compare data entries of the highest and lowest risk quintile (n = 5046). To learn more on the information seeking behavior of DRS users we created a dataset on the characteristics of those who calculate more than one DRS (n = 11,902).ResultsMost users (61%) entered the DRS without a referring website. Forty percent of users did not know their waist circumference. Visit duration among high-risk DRS records was almost 1.5 min longer compared to low-risk DRS records (p-value < 0.001). Those who calculated multiple DRS were associated with a higher first DRS and male gender.ConclusionUnderstanding users’ website utilization is an important step to evaluate risk calculator websites.Practice implicationsA range of media should be used conjointly to raise type 2 diabetes mellitus risk awareness. Risk websites should be linked to patient information pages.