Designing interactivity on consumer health websites: PARAFORUM for spinal cord injury

Objective: This paper addresses the issue of interactivity on health consumer websites powered by health organizations, by presenting the design of PARAFORUM, an interactive website in the field of spinal cord injury (SCI).

Methods: The design of PARAFORUM is based on different streams of research in online health communication, web-based communities, open innovation communities and formative evaluation with stakeholders.

Results: PARAFORUM implements a model of diversified interactivity based on individuals with SCI and their families, health professionals, and researchers sharing their expertise in SCI. In addition to traditional health professional/researcher-to-consumer and peer-to-peer interactions, through PARAFORUM consumers, health professionals and researchers can co-design ideas for the enhancement of practice and research on SCI.

Conclusion: There is the need to reflect on the conceptualization and operationalization of interactivity on consumer health websites. Interactions between different users can make these websites important platforms for promoting self-management of chronic conditions, organizational innovation, and participatory research.

Practice implications: Interactivity on consumer health websites is a main resource for health communication. Health organizations are invited to build interactive websites, by considering, however, that the exploitation of interactivity require users' collaboration, processes and standards for managing content, creating and translating knowledge, and conducting internet-based studies.