| Potentials and Benefits of Patient Communities from a German Perspective Abstract (2009) | |||||||||||||||
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| Virtual Communities (VCs) offer ubiquitous access to information and exchange possibilities for people in similar circumstances. This is especially valuable for patients with chronic / life-threatening diseases as they exhibit strong needs for information and interaction. Grounded on the preceding findings of the analysis on the user-centric construction of the VC krebsgemeinschaft.de (an online community for cancer patients in the German-speaking internet) and the evaluation of the underlying design elements we summarise our findings on potentials and benefits of patient communities in Germany. 1 General conditions for cancer patients and potentials of Virtual Communities 1 Cancer is the second most frequent cause of death in Germany with approximately 338000 newly diagnosed people yearly (Deutsche_Krebshilfe, 2003). It is astonishing that until 2001 few information or interactive sites for cancer patients could be found on the German-speaking internet (Daum, et al., 2001). With this background, the COSMOS 2-research project developed, introduced, and operated a Virtual Community (VC) for cancer affected persons. This article focuses on the evaluation of acceptance and usage of the site by intended users. The basis for this project was preliminary work on the systematic and user-orientated design of the Virtual Community krebsgemeinschaft.de (Arnold, et al., 2003; Leimeister, 2004; Leimeister, et al., 2002). After a brief description of the situation of patients, we outline the potentials of a VC for this user group. We then summarise the central design elements as well as the specific characteristics of these elements for the case of krebsgemeinschaft.de. Further, the acceptance and utility of | |||||||||||||||
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