Bespoke web application: My Health Today
My Health Today is a survey website set up to collect data on people’s experience of their own health. Using a system called EQ-5D, developed by the EuroQoL Group, it produces a measurement of health in terms of five different areas: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain and discomfort, and anxiety and depression.
The bespoke programming used to create the online survey does several things – it adds the data to a database which holds all of the information (collected for research purposes), and using this data it produces charts showing the health of all participants so far. It also indicates how the current participant’s health compares to that of all the past participants. Around 33,000 results from earlier subjects were included before the website was launched, so test results can really be measured against the population as a whole.
The survey was commissioned by Professor Paul Kind from the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. Professor Kind is a leading researcher in health outcomes, involved in investigating people’s experiences of health and wellbeing. The EQ-5D tool is becoming established as a way of offering a more meaningful measurement than the simple presence or absence of disease. There is a lot of potential for delivering this online, and we’re looking forward to being able to tell you more in the future!
