Education and Public Health
| We have been involved in the training of medical
students and students in other fields of science in the last 10 years. Endocrine lectures
will be made available on the Golbal Heath Network. We developed Medirobo, a patient
information system providing about 30 hours of multimedia easy-to-understand information
on the most relevant diseases in humans. We also started a program to increase risk
awareness for certain diseases and screening for diabetes through the internet.
Using the World Wide Web--a new approach to risk identification of diabetes mellitus. Baehring TU, Schulze H, Bornstein SR, Scherbaum WA Diabetes mellitus is a major health problem with a rising tendency world-wide. A new strategy for risk evaluation and data collection of undiagnosed non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) using the World Wide Web (WWW) is presented. An easy-to-handle questionnaire on typical risk factors was converted into an interactive WWW document. The Internet provides the suitable platform for the net-based distribution of the questionnaire form as well as the computer-assisted entering and interpretation of the data (http:(/)/www.uni-leipzig.de/-diabetes). The analysis program, installed on our WWW server, interprets the information and sends the assessment on-line back to the inquiring user PC. The data are also collected anonymously in a database for epidemiological studies. In the test period, 744 worldwide accesses were registered: 433 men, mean age 39.8 +/- 14.4 years (range 10-83) and 311 women, mean age 36.7 +/- 12.7 years (range 11-77). An increased risk for undiagnosed diabetes was identified to 43.6%. The risk profile of male and female users showed no significant gender-related differences. Using the WWW technology can support early detection and adequate treatment of undiagnosed diabetes. This innovative strategy to screen for a high risk profile is an useful, cost-effective and up-to-date tool for broad community health education and epidemiological studies world-wide
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