We are working with Dr. Peipert of the Women and Infants Hospital on a computer based STD counseling program intended for young women in Providence. Dr. Peipert is a Brown faculty member in the Medical school and heads up several research projects in the field of behavioral medicine. He would like us to create educational software that will be used for a study on the effectiveness of diaphragm knowledge in STD prevention. Currently, he proposes that we create a pilot version of the software, which will be used by participants in the clinic. Participants will be invited to join the study, sign an informed consent form, and privately look through the program and learn more about methods of STD prevention. Over the course of the study, they will come to the clinic at set intervals to use the program for half an hour to an hour. Dr. Peipert will be focusing on the participants' health outcomes: gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomoniasis.
The software we design will be intended for women ages 18-35 years in the Providence community. The study will target women who are at high risk of contracting an STD—typically, sexually active low-income women. These women generally have little access to education and preventative health care. Dr. Peipert hopes that the content of the program will empower women to take control of their sexual health. The intervention will be a computer based STD counseling program that is divided into two arms: a control group and a treatment group. Both groups will use the computer program to receive STD counseling. Women in the control group will learn about condoms only; women in the treatment group will learn about condoms and diaphragms as STD prevention methods. If women in the treatment group express interest in the diaphragm, Dr. Peipert's team will offer to fit and provide these women with the device for free or at a nominal cost.
Dr. Peipert is seeking a computer program that has the capability both to educate patients and to collect longitudinal data for evaluating efficacy of the counseling. Dr. Peipert is looking for educational software that automatically randomizes study participants into the two arms for the control and treatment groups. The program must be easy to use and present very sensitive information in a culturally conscious manner. The program must store data in a format that can be easily used in statistical analysis software. Finally, he would like the program to modifiable in order for the recommendations from the pilot testing to be implemented.
In terms of the technology required, the following factors will affect our decision: