Patient Information Aid: An innovative educational program to improve outcomes of online consumer health information

With an increasing volume of health information online, it becomes critical for consumers to improve their search and evaluation skills to retrieve reliable information. The Patient Information Aid (PIA) program is aimed to facilitate information seeking, potentially leading to positive outcomes of online consumer health information and the reduction of negative outcomes. This program consists of an educational website based on findings from a systematic literature review and a qualitative research. By teaching information evaluation skills at-the-point-of-search, the general objective of the PIA website is to improve users' e-health information literacy. Adopting user-centered design methods, we ran two focus groups with users having various literacy levels. We applied usability heuristics and information architecture strategies to design the PIA website, and developed personas and task scenarios to inform the wireframing. In this paper, we share our experience and insights on designing an educational information literacy program, which can be useful for information professionals working in all areas.