Do women attending a screening mammogram access eHealth information from the internet? Aditi Dey School of Health Information Management Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney NSW, Australia Beth Reid School of Health Information Management Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney NSW, Australia Robyn Godding BreastScreen, The Cottage, Royal North Shore Hospital Northern Sydney and Lower Central Coast NSW, Australia Andrew Campbell School of Behavioural and Community Health Sciences Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney NSW, Australia Abstract— A longitudinal study is being conducted on a cohort of 415 women at a breast screening service in Sydney to determine any changes to their behaviour of access of eHealth information and also explore the predictors and user needs over a two-year period. Behaviour of access of eHealth information has been studied in cancer patients [1-4], but no previous study has looked at people’s behaviour of internet access of information prior to their diagnosis and followed them through a continuum of diagnosis and treatment. This longitudinal study is being conducted in three phases. In the first phase (recruitment of women in the cohort), women’s baseline characteristics, behaviour and perceptions of access were explored. Preliminary analysis shows that though 80% of women accessed the internet and 62% accessed health related information from the internet, only 7% of women had accessed breast health and screening information from the internet. It is also interesting to note that 70% of women expressed a perceived need to obtain more information from the internet if diagnosed with breast cancer. This study supports using the internet as a viable way of communicating health information to women in all age groups particularly the 50-69 years age group. Keywords- Breast screening, eHealth, perceptions, behaviour I. INTRODUCTION In today’s world, many people, across all age groups, access the internet for health related information. Previous studies have focused on internet searching behavior of cancer patients, 9-19 but no previous study has looked at people’s behavior of internet access of information prior to their diagnosis and followed them through a continuum of diagnosis and treatment. This longitudinal study follows a cohort of women at a breast screening service to determine any changes to their knowledge, perceptions and behavior of internet access of information and explores the predictors of internet access and user needs over a period of two years. In the first phase (recruitment of women in the cohort), women’s baseline characteristics, behavior and perceptions of access of the internet were explored and are presented in this paper. II. METHOD We conducted this study in a breast screening service in Sydney. This breast screening service is one of seven units in the northern Sydney and lower central coast region of BreastScreen NSW. A longitudinal study is being conducted in three phases over a period of two years. The study period for this research is October 2004 to June 2006. Phase one (baseline period) started with recruiting women in the study when they came for their screening mammogram at the clinic. This paper utilizes data from Phase1 of the study. Four hundred and sixty one eligible women were invited to participate in the study from October 2004 to December 2004. Of these women, four hundred and fifteen women agreed to participate and were recruited in the cohort study (participation rate=90%). Women who were unable to communicate in English were excluded from the study. Since the study focussed on women’s access of electronic sources of information (from the internet) on breast health and screening and since these are mostly available only in English, excluding women who are unable to communicate in English would not have any significant impact on this study. The written self-administered questionnaire was developed after a detailed literature review of the topic. The questionnaire had 38 multiple-choice or short answer questions divided into ten sections. The questionnaire was 1-4244-9705-3/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE 246