Knowledge patterns for online health portal development

Abstract

This article describes the development and evaluation of a set of knowledge patterns that provide guidelines and implications of design for developers of mental health portals. The knowledge patterns were based on three foundations: (1) knowledge integration of language technology approaches; (2) experiments with language technology applications and (3) user studies of portal interaction. A mixed-methods approach was employed for the evaluation of the knowledge patterns: formative workshops with knowledge pattern experts and summative surveys with experts in specific domains. The formative evaluation improved the cohesion of the patterns. The results of the summative evaluation showed that the problems discussed in the patterns were relevant for the domain, and that the knowledge embedded was useful to solve them. Ten patterns out of thirteen achieved an average score above 4.0, which is a positive result that leads us to conclude that they can be used as guidelines for developing health portals.