title: Key Intervention Characteristics in e-Health: Steps Towards Standardized Communication.
abstract: This paper reports expert opinion on e-health intervention characteristics that enable effective communication of characteristics across the diverse field of e-health interventions. The paper presents a visualization tool to support communication of the defining characteristics.
  
  
  
  An initial list of e-health intervention characteristics was developed through an iterative process of item generation and discussion among the 12 authors. The list was distributed to 123 experts in the field, who were emailed an invitation to assess and rank the items. Participants were asked to evaluate these characteristics in three separate ways.
  
  
  
  A total of 50 responses were received for a response rate of 40.7%. Six respondents who reported having little or no expertise in e-health research were removed from the dataset. Our results suggest that 10 specific intervention characteristics were consistently supported as of central importance by the panel of 44 e-intervention experts. The weight and perceived relevance of individual items differed between experts; oftentimes, this difference is a result of the individual theoretical perspective and/or behavioral target of interest.
  
  
  
  The first iteration of the visualization of salient characteristics represents an ambitious effort to develop a tool that will support communication of the defining characteristics for e-health interventions aimed to assist e-health developers and researchers to communicate the key characteristics of their interventions in a standardized manner that facilitates dialog.
authors.affiliation: University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. b.m.bewick@leeds.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Bridgette M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Bewick
authors.affiliation: Merrill-Palmer Skillman Institute and Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, UK.
authors.forename: Steven J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Ondersma
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Research Unit, Elective Surgery Center, Regional Hospital Silkeborg, Silkeborg, Denmark.|Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
authors.forename: Mette T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Høybye
authors.affiliation: Explorable AS, Kristiansand, Norway.
authors.forename: Oskar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Blakstad
authors.affiliation: Trimbos Institute The Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, Utrecht, The Netherlands.|Arkin Mental Health Care, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Matthijs
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Blankers
authors.affiliation: The Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Håvar
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Brendryen
authors.affiliation: Blue Cross Addiction Clinic, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Pål F
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Helland
authors.affiliation: The Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Ayna B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Johansen
authors.affiliation: Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wallace
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Psychiatry Research, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sinadinovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Psychiatry Research, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sundström
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Psychiatry Research, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.|Stockholm Center for Dependency Disorders, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anne H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Berman
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Behavior; Guideline; Standardized reporting; Technology; e-Health intervention