Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, School of Translational Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Alfred Health, Carlton, Australia.
JMIR Form Res. 2024 Nov 4;8:e54565. doi: 10.2196/54565.
Delayed diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) contributes to poorer health outcomes and onward transmission to sexual partners. Access to best-practice sexual health care may be limited by barriers such as cost, distance to care providers, sexual stigma, and trust in health care providers. Online assessments of risk offer a novel means of supporting access to evidence-based sexual health information, testing, and treatment by providing more individualized sexual health information based on user inputs.
This developmental evaluation aims to find potential users' views and experiences in relation to an online assessment of risk, called iSpySTI (Melbourne Sexual Health Center), including the likely impacts of use.
Individuals presenting with urogenital symptoms to a specialist sexual health clinic were given the opportunity to trial a web-based, Bayesian-powered tool that provides a list of 2 to 4 potential causes of their symptoms based on inputs of known STI risk factors and symptoms. Those who tried the tool were invited to participate in a once-off, semistructured research interview. Descriptive, action, and emotion coding informed the comparative analysis of individual cases.
Findings from interviews with 14 people who had used the iSpySTI tool support the superiority of the online assessment of STI risk compared to existing sources of sexual health information (eg, internet search engines) in providing trusted and probabilistic information to users. Additionally, potential users reported benefits to their emotional well-being in the intervening period between noticing symptoms and being able to access care. Differences in current and imagined urgency of health care seeking and emotional impacts were found based on clinical diagnosis (eg, non-STI, curable and incurable but treatable STIs) and whether participants were born in Australia or elsewhere.
Online assessments of risk provide users experiencing urogenital symptoms with more individualized and evidence-based health information that can improve their health care-seeking and provide reassurance in the period before they can access care.
性传播感染（STIs）的诊断和治疗延迟会导致更差的健康结果，并向性伴侣传播。获得最佳实践的性健康护理可能会受到障碍的限制，例如成本、距离护理提供者、性耻辱和对医疗保健提供者的信任。在线风险评估提供了一种新的方法，可以通过根据用户输入提供更个性化的性健康信息来支持获得基于证据的性健康信息、测试和治疗。
这项发展评估旨在了解潜在用户对在线风险评估（称为 iSpySTI（墨尔本性健康中心））的看法和经验，包括使用的可能影响。
向在专门的性健康诊所出现泌尿生殖症状的个体提供试用基于网络的贝叶斯动力工具的机会，该工具根据已知的性传播感染风险因素和症状输入，为其症状提供 2 到 4 种潜在原因的列表。试用该工具的人被邀请参加一次性半结构化研究访谈。描述性、行动性和情感编码为个案比较分析提供了信息。
对 14 名使用过 iSpySTI 工具的人的访谈结果支持在线 STI 风险评估优于现有的性健康信息来源（例如，互联网搜索引擎），为用户提供值得信赖和概率性的信息。此外，潜在用户报告说，在能够获得护理之前，他们的情感健康在注意到症状和能够获得护理之间的间隔期间得到了改善。基于临床诊断（例如，非 STI、可治愈和不可治愈但可治疗的 STI）和参与者是否在澳大利亚或其他地方出生，发现了当前和想象中的医疗保健寻求紧迫性以及情绪影响方面的差异。
在线风险评估为出现泌尿生殖症状的用户提供了更个性化和基于证据的健康信息，这可以改善他们的医疗保健寻求，并在他们能够获得护理之前提供保证。
