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| Site manager Jane McKenzie White, seated,
with rheumatologists Alan Matsumoto and Joaan Bathon and their new arthritis
Web site |
Arthritis, says rheumatologist Joan Bathon, M.D., is becoming all too common in the United States. With advances in treatment of cancer and heart disease leading to longer lives, 40 million patients, or 1 out of 5 adults, suffer arthritis and joint related diseases. And many of those patients, Bathon adds, feel they’re not getting the attention they need from their doctors.
“Patients, especially those with the less dramatic but disabling disease osteoarthritis, often say that their condition was minimized by the treating physician,” Bathon says. “These patients feel an enormous need to get more information about their illness and treatments.”
To meet that need, as well as to educate physicians further about arthritis, Bathon and her colleagues in the division of Rheumatology looked to the World Wide Web. Could they create a site appealing to both audiences? “Yes,” they agreed, but the site would have to be both deep and deeply interactive.
Following the creation of an editorial board of Rheumatology faculty and months of brainstorming and planning sessions, www.hopkins-arthritis.org has become just that, attracting 900,000 hits and 30,000 visitors per month. The site offers visitors volumes on everything you ever wanted to know about arthritis – from gout to Lyme disease – but its real appeal is its interactiveness. The “Ask the Expert” page, moderated by rheumatologist Alan Matsumoto, M.D., is among the most popular features for both patients and physicians.
“If you’re a practicing physician in Southern Georgia, you may not have anyone to run cases by,” Matsumoto says. “So the idea of sharing electronically that kind of information in the community is very appealing.”
Because both patients and physicians are hungry for new therapies, the site is “aggressively updated,” says site manager Jane McKenzie White. Live and recorded netcasts of arthritis conferences and CME courses keep physicians current with the latest treatments. And because many elderly arthritis patients are isolated and depressed, which can lead to poor outcomes, the interactive nature of the site also provides social support through chats with physicians and other patients.
When the site was first conceived almost two years ago, there was little about arthritis on the net. Now, Bathon, Matsumoto and White note, there are many Web sites – but none as deep as the Hopkins site. (The site was named one of the nation’s three top nonprofit health-care sites by eHealthcare World. Hopkins Rheumatology ranks near the very top every year in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of specialties at American hospitals.) The site is supported by unrestricted grants from pharmaceutical companies, which means they have no say on content. “Unlike other sites, we don’t have advertisements,” says Matsumoto. “We’re very careful about the fact that there’s a need to provide credible information to both patients and health-care providers.”