An international environmental scan of the scope and characteristics of patient decision aids which are freely available online

Objective: 

To analyse the scope and characteristics of freely available online patient decision aids. 

Methods: 

An international environmental scan of online decision aids, with no language restriction, was conducted by searching aids in the recent Cochrane review and 35 online sources. Aid characteristics were extracted and analysed. 

Results: 

Of 1555 decision aids identified, there were 1222 unique aids after removing duplicates. Of these, 785 met eligibility criteria. The aids were from 17 countries (30 % from the Netherlands, 20 % from the US) and 44 % in English. Nearly all had a downloadable PDF or were printable and 32 % were interactive web-based. Many aids (72 %) were about a treatment decision. Most common diseases addressed were cancer (23 %), especially breast cancer, musculoskeletal diseases (11 %), and genitourinary system diseases (10 %). 

Conclusions:

There are many freely available decision aids, with most addressing treatment decisions and particular health conditions. Many (21 %) of the aids identified were duplicates, some topics are covered by multiple versions of decision aids, and other topics have few decision aids. 

Practice implications: 

While many decision aids exist online, initiatives are needed to minimise aid duplication, achieve better distribution of aids across health decisions/topics, encourage greater collaboration between developers, and adaption of existing aids.