Potentials of web 2.0 for diabetes education of adolescent patients

Abstract

Diabetes is a very common chronic disease which produces complications in almost all body organs and consumes a huge amount of the health budget. Although education has proved to be useful in diabetes management, there is a great need to improve the availability of these courses for the increasing number of diabetic patients. E-learning can facilitate this service, but the current education system should be tailored towards e-learning standards. Amongst diabetic patients, adolescents as computer natives are suggested as the best target to e-learning diabetes education. With regards to its features, Web 2.0 can be a very good technology to build a framework for diabetes education and consequent evaluation of this education. © ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2009.