Patterns of access to the Guías de Práctica Clínica (Clinical Practice Guidelines) Web Portal in Colombia

• Main Authors: Fernando Suárez-Obando, Carlos Gómez-Restrepo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2016-10-01
• Series: Revista de la Facultad de Medicina
• Subjects: Guías de práctica clínica como asunto; Internet; Difusión por la web; Navegador Web; Informática médica; Informática en Salud Pública
• Online Access: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/revfacmed/article/view/55833
• ISSN: 0120-0011; 2357-3848

Introduction: Colombian clinical practice guidelines for health care are published in the Web Portal of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection. Objective: To analyze the traffic of the clinical guidelines portal through web consultation metrics. Materials and methods: The website traffic analysis was performed over a period of 20 months using Google Analytics and Megalytic. Results: 190 115 users logged in, and 125 475 of them (≈66%) were first-time visitors, while 63 118 (≈33%) were repeated users. 126 994 users visited 608 745 pages, with an average of 3.2 pages per session, query time of 3.45 minutes per visit and average rebound rate of 46.74%. 40% of users interacted with at least three pages and 40% left the site without interacting with a second page. The sessions originated in Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Spain; the first country represented 169 666 visits and Bogotá D.C. recorded the highest number of visits (32%), followed by Medellín (12.3%), Cali (8.3%), Barranquilla (4.1%) and Bucaramanga (3.3%), for a total of 60% of the traffic. The most visited guides were handling pregnancy and infection of the urogenital tract. Conclusions: The portal had an acceptable traffic during the first 20 months of operation. An innovative portal that improves the dissemination of the guides must remain active.