ABSTRACT
Patients represent an extremely diverse set of users of computer systems for health information. They vary in their medical conditions and their values on quality of life, as well as in the experiential backgrounds they bring to the interaction with the computer. In the design of interactive technology for health information, it is important to determine how best to present health information to individual users. This chapter discusses a variety of methods currently used to tailor patient education materials using computers. Additionally, an approach for automating the creation of patientspecific materials is described in detail. This approach is based on computer decision modeling to measure the importance of variables in an individual patient's treatment decision is described in more detail.
