Odile Smeets*, Trimbos-instituut, Utrecht, Netherlands Katherina Martin Abello, Trimbos Institute, Utrecht, Netherlands Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Web 2.0 approaches for clinical practice, clinical research, quality monitoring Presentation Type: Rapid-Fire Presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: C-Rotunda Room Date: 2012-09-16 02:00 PM – 02:45 PM Last modified: 2012-09-10

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While the field of e-Mental Health is developing fast and the number of e-Mental Health interventions worldwide is increasing rapidly, the demand of quality standards is increasing too. Especially for clients and users of e-Mental Health interventions it is important to prevent that ‘they can’t see the wood for the trees’ through all the supply available on the World Wide Web.
A Quality Seal for e-Mental Health programs can help potential clients on the Internet to make cognizant choices by providing them with trustworthy information about the programs, and displaying in a very simple way if the intervention meets the basic quality standards of e-Mental Health. This kind of information empowers the clients to actively search for help and take action to work on their mental health. It also encourages self-management; as clients can read the scores of the different criteria taken in consideration for the evaluation, and decide if the intervention is suitable for them or not. At the same time, this certifying instrument also stimulates participation, since the users of the interventions can vote and rate through the Quality Seal the programs, creating a ‘crowd-sourced’ peer-to-peer feedback. Finally it can stimulate developers to improve their products based on the experience of their users and the feedback of other professionals.
The existing quality instruments, which are relevant for assessing the quality of e-Mental Health interventions, can be divided in instruments to evaluate the reliability of the health information on the Internet and instruments to evaluate the effectiveness of the e-Mental Health interventions.
To assess the quality of e-Mental Health interventions it is important to evaluate more aspects than only the quality of the information and effectiveness of the intervention. Due to the lack of a tool which combines and evaluates all the different dimensions and aspects of e-Mental Health interventions, the Trimbos-institute in the Netherlands is developing a Quality Seal and a certifying instrument for this purpose.
This is a project assigned by the Dutch Ministry of Health and in co-operation with experts from mental health institutions (both addiction and mental health) - which developed e-Mental Health interventions for years – the project aims to provide a low threshold certifying instrument which enables both clients, developers and distributers/suppliers of e-Mental Health interventions to check and evaluate the quality.
The Quality Seal will consist of an expert judgment and a user judgment. To obtain the quality seal for an e-Mental Health intervention, suppliers of e-Mental Health intervention will fill in an online self-certifying questionnaire, which will undergo peer review by professionals/experts from different institutions and universities.
The peer experts are judging different items within 4 criteria, which are: User friendliness, Effectiveness, Transparency and Technical aspects and security.

Risk, A., Dzenowagis, J. Review Of Internet Health Information Quality Initiatives. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2001;3(4):e28
Fischer, E, Nabitz, U, Riper, H. Kwaliteitsbeoordeling e-Mental Health: de Keurkring. Utrecht: Trimbos-instituut, 2010.
http://www.trimbos.nl/nieuws/trimbos-nieuws/kwaliteitskeurmerk-e-mental-health-in-de-maak