The Scottish health helpline NHS24 has set up a new-look website with health advice and doubled the number of hits compared with its old site immediately.
NHS24.com was launched two days before Christmas with new content, including a health encyclopaedia and self-help guide, created by NHS Direct but tailored for Scottish users and the Scottish health service.
Dr Chris Stewart, director of development for NHS24 and a GP in Edinburgh, said in the week before launch there were 32,000 hits on the old website. This increased to 43,000 in the week following launch, 23-30 December , and a total of 153,815 hits were recorded between 19 December and 8 January.
He told EHI Primary Care: “This is a quality assured additional service that people are choosing to use and I think it will make a contribution to health care in Scotland.”
Dr Stewart said the production of a health care website for Scotland had been one of the recommendations of the independent review of NHS 24, published in October after the troubled service faced severe criticism of its telephone-based service.
Dr Stewart said the use of the service, which has yet to be promoted to people in Scotland apart from a mention in the Scottish Executive’s winter health campaign, had surprised him.
The figures showed that 55% of visitors to the site are now looking at the self help guide and encyclopaedia.
Dr Stewart added: “Its great to know that people have good information rather than just Googling it and seeing what comes up.”
He said it was too early to say what impact the website might have on the number of callers to NHS24 but the service would go on to explore what factors were involved in use of the website.
NHS Direct, the English-based health advice service, reported an increase in visitors to its website over Christmas of more than a third. Over the three days between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day there were 49,301 total visits to the NHS Direct Online website, up 31% on the same period in 2004.
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