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The paper reports the findings of the analysis of a sample of 829 online Continuous Medical Education (CME) enrolments aimed at inspecting users' preferences and behaviours. The contents of the analyzed course are provided as online SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) resources together with the corresponding Pdf downloadable versions allowing different usage patterns (online only, Pdf only, online AND Pdf, mixed online OR Pdf). The results point out that there is not a specific preference for one of the four patterns and that most of the users access both navigable modules and Pdf documents. Demographic characteristics and initial knowledge level do not influence the choice of a specific usage pattern that probably depends on internal or context factors. From the point of view of knowledge acquisition, the four patterns are equivalent. As regards users' behaviour, the analysis has pointed out two issues: 1) the attitude to conclude the course in a short time and to reach good test scores, but not the excellence; 2) learning activity tracing data were not available for all the enrolments. Cues for discussion are proposed.

The discordant results of a comparison between calculated and perceived screen complexity of 14 Italian Institutional Cancer Web Sites are described here.

The paper describes the results of an e-learning experimental project for Continuous Medical Education (CME) in Occupational Medicine in terms of: extent of the e-learning courses usage by the healthcare personnel, knowledge acquisition and satisfaction. 11 courses have been available for 11 months during which 2,034 users all over Italy enrolled in 5,183 courses with a success percentage of 72% and a significant difference between test scores performed before and after attending the e-learning courses. Also user's satisfaction, inspected through a questionnaire, has provided good results. Starting from the experience reported, the authors are confident that e-learning will gain ground and evolve as an effective and appreciated educational mean for CME.

The paper compares the effectiveness of a traditional residential and an e-learning course for nurses, and suggests ways to identify the psychological characteristics which might lead people to prefer e-learning education.

The aim of the present paper is to describe the process of developing an e-learning system for continuous medical education in the field of occupational medicine, with special focus on usability. The following steps are described: the needs analysis of the potential users; the prototype of the system that has been set up; the usability evaluation of the prototype by a sample of ten users; the analysis of the potential improvements; the evaluation of the revised system. The results of the usability tests point out that investing in improving usability was useful, even when they have not been recommended as mandatory. Only data collected from real active users will provide a more exhaustive evaluation, nevertheless it can be considered that positive results can be expected.

The Problem: the quality of health-related information available for general public on the web has been widely debated, often expressing concern, in the last few years, but also other mass media supply medical contents for health consumer., The Objective: To evaluate the quality of information available by the Italian people through Internet in comparison with the one published on the press with a high circulation. A general interest topic such as over-weight and obesity has been identified as a convenient field for the comparison., Methods: A sample of web sites and articles have been collected--excluding the promotional ones- in order to compare their completeness and correctness. National guidelines were the golden standard. For the web sites, the availability of indications to let the user know the reliability of the site--we will refer to these as "transparency"--has been evaluated through 9 parameters., Results: 45 informative sites and 35 articles have been found: the Italian population has a good chance of getting information. Web sites are much more complete than articles. Correctness of both is quite good. Transparency of web sites leaves much to desire, independently from the quality of the content., Lesson Learnt: There is probably an excessive confidence about the transparency and caution of articles in dealing with health-related topics., Conclusion: The web publishers must necessarily be educated to apply the existing good practice rules, but in the meantime also the press with a high circulation, that is read by a high percentage of people, has to improve its quality in order to co-operate in supplying adequate information. In general, from the traditional exceptionalist approach for medical information on the internet, a definition of media quality standard could be derived.

The present paper deals with an experience of blackout of the hospital information system at our Medical Centre, trying to evaluate the impact on internal users (physicians, nurses, clerks) and patients population. Limited inconveniences have occurred to out-patients in terms of delay in collecting medical reports after diagnostic test execution. As regards direct users, impact was evaluated through a structured interview. Administrative personnel, that have been using computer-based system for at least ten years, have not declared particular inconveniences, accepting the overtime or the extra-work as simply unavoidable. On the contrary, health-care personnel reported a heavy negative impact of the system failure on their activity. After a great effort to achieve the system acceptance and direct physicians usage, the blackout of the system has pointed out that the situation has changed since a few years ago: now the HIS, and particularly its clinical core, is considered mission critical.

The present study deals with the assessment of the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the clinical core of the HIS we are building, and progressively spreading into the medical centre, through the use of two questionnaires. The differences in subjective perception among clinical units and professional roles have been analyzed. Results show that the system, in use on a mandatory basis, has been accepted. Most of the users are satisfied, and probable removable causes of dissatisfaction have been identified.