Patient learning centre Soppi: A way to promote human-computer interaction in health care.

The Patient Learning Centre was founded in Hyvinkää Hospital in 2000 to support patients and their families' informational needs. In order to evaluate the Learning Centre's effectiveness we started a development project. One of the purposes was to analyze patients' Internet and computer use. The data for the describing survey-research was collected by questionnaires at two occasions. At the end of the project a number of patients who used internet had increased, one third did not use a computer at all. Getting information in discussions with the nurse was however the most important way. To develop user friendly methods in getting information is a challenge.