Data Descriptive Metrics/Statistics

17 Data Descriptive Metrics/Statistics

The majority of the medical websites in the sample (85.8%) are active, while almost 58.5% of the total websites are/were offering a kind of interactive medical application. Delving more into the data it was observed that, concerning the offering of interactive medical web-based services /services, 33.3% of the offline websites and 62.6 % of the online websites are offering interactive web medical applications. An initial assumption that was derived from the Aforementioned descriptive is that the offering of medical web-based services can have an impact on the success and the survivability of the medical websites. In addition to these, the websites that present any kind of certification (HONcode, Trust-e etc.) constitute one fourth or, in other words, 25% of the sample’s medical websites, while 70% of the sample’s medical websites have content that present greater value for the patients/ users rather than for the medical providers/practitioners.

Moreover, 23.6% of the sample medical websites included content related to specific health problems, such as long-term diseases or life-threatening conditions such as asthma, diabetes, HIV or specific pneumonological and cardiovascular conditions. Furthermore, 26.1% of the sample’s medical websites websites have content related to general health topics, featuring articles, practical advice and new treatment methods or new discoveries around various pathological conditions, without being strictly limited to a specific healthcare condition. The medical websites that are/were providing medical resources and medical education content make up 35.5 % of the sample, while the medical websites that are/were providing to the users content related to information concerning new and existing drugs, information about their active substance and their adverse reactions, drug identification tools and applications, constitute only 5% of the sample.
Table : Frequencies of website categories as percentage in whole sample

In addition, the aforementioned descriptive percentages of the sample, it must be mentioned also that the websites provided and supported by “for profit” organization constitute 36.8% of the sample’s websites, while the websites provided/supported from non-profit private organizations constitute 52.2% and from non-profit governmental institutions 11% of the sample’s websites. Moreover, the offline websites that belonged to profit organizations constitute 42.2% of the offline websites of the sample, while the non-profit offline website constitute 51.1% and the governmental websites 6.7% of the offline websites in the sample. This can be explained by taking into account the sources of revenue to sustain a medical website. It is obvious that governmental websites, irrespectively of their profitability, can remain active possibly until they will be upgraded or their purpose changed by the policy makers. Private companies can also have revenues to invest to sustain a medical website for long time, while for the non-profit organization it is a continuous fight to maintain the revenue stream hat is required for the maintenance of their medical websites.

Table 8 summarises the percentages of profit, non-profit and governmental organizations that offer a kind of interactive medical web application for the users in order to enhance their experience and facilitate the use of the website.
Table : Percentages of profit and non-profit organizations who offer medical web-based services

Category	Percentage of the profit/non-profit organizations	Percentage of the whole sample	Percentage of the websites offering interactive medical web-based services
"For profit" organizations that offer Med. Web App.	58.1%	21.4%	36.6%
"Non-for profit " private organizations that offer Web Med. App.	57.2%	29.9%	51.1%
“Non-profit” governmental websites that offer Web Med. App.	65.7%	7.2%	18.8%

As it is observed, the medical websites provided by non-for-profit organizations consist one third of the whole sample and more than half of the medical websites that are/were offer medical web application, irrespectively of what kind of organization is/was supporting them.

Furthermore, in the process of the data analysis was evolving it was observed that 42% of the medical websites that offer interactive medical web-based services have fast or average loading times, and almost half of them are present and active in social networks. In addition to this, it was observed that the websites that offer interactive web medical applications have higher average ranking than those that do not offer such services, more linked website on average as well as that people spent more average time on them than those without such services.

Finally, many different revenue models were identified to be used by the medical websites. Those are be analysed in detail in the following section.

17.1Popular Revenue Models in the Medical Websites

The most popular revenue models identified are analysed below presenting their potential advantages and disadvantages from the point of view of a medical website’s administrators.

Advertising Revenue Model

Online advertising is a quite common revenue model among the websites active in various sectors and with a variation of activities. This kind of revenue model is used also in the case of the medical websites. Following this revenue model, advertisements relevant to the user’s healthcare interests are appearing in a pre-sold or pre-rent online advertising space on the medical website. The advertisements should be limited in order not to distract the user from the content of the website. In many cases the advertisements appeared in a special space called “Other Products/Areas of Interest.” The web presence as pop-up messages was very rare probably because it can easily distract the users as well as users tend to trust lesser online applications and platforms that are full of advertising pop-up messages.

On the other hand, advertising through a medical website can be considered by advertisers as a good opportunity to advertise products because it allows them to address a very focused target group, explore its needs and customize the advertisements according to the activity, occupation and the interest of the users as well as according to the user’s interest in comparison with their demographic characteristics (Mendling et al., 2005).

Table : Advantages and Disadvantages of Advertising Revenue Model

Advantages	Disadvantages
The space is pre-rent/ pre-sold so the revenue will be independent from the clicks on the advertisement or the sales of the owner of the advertisement	Advertisements in the form of pop-up messages or excessive advertising can be considered distractive and lower the trust of the customers to the platform
Advertisement are relevant to the interests of a very focused target group so this can be considered as an excellent opportunity by the advertisers	The revenue generated from the advertising model might not be enough and combination with other revenue models might be needed to sustain the medical website

Sponsorship Revenue Model

This model generates a revenue stream with direction from a sponsor to the administrators of the medical website. The sponsor can be an individual or an organization related to the healthcare sector or it can be a foundation with general humanitarian activities, publishing companies which are developing business, large IT companies and policy makers. The sponsor can also considered to be the mother-organisation that supports/provides the medical website, the funding from university projects and the revenue coming from governmental funds.

There might be also variations of this revenue model in the form of Public-Private collaborations between governmental and private organizations. This revenue model presents similarities to the sponsorship model from the medical website’s administration point of view, since the revenue will come from an external public organization that will let the commercial exploitation to a private organization through a form of partnership.

In return, various promotional activities can be adopted from the medical website’s providers towards the sponsor such as (Mendling et al., 2005):

• 
  The medical website can carry the sponsor’s name in its homepage
  
• 
  The sponsor's logo can be displayed on the webpages of the medical website.
  

Table : Advantages and Disadvantages of Sponsorship Model

Advantages	Disadvantages
Stable revenue from the sponsor	Continuous efforts to meet the demands of the sponsor. These efforts may be avoided by signing a contract with the Sponsor at the beginning of the collaboration, comprising all issues stipulated and negotiated by both parties
The name of the sponsor will add more trustworthiness to the medical website and may attract more potential users.	Sponsorship might stop if certain conditions appear or targets are not achieved

Commercial Content Model

In the medical websites that follow this specific revenue model the revenue is generated through commercial exploitation of the material, content, applications, tools and services of the website. In many cases this model requires the cooperation with e-publishers that they have also profit from the commercial exploitation of their material.

The content on the medical websites can be divided into two categories: the free content and the commercial content. The main purpose of the free content is the promotion of its provider while the commercial content is creating the extra revenue required for the sustainability of the medical website. Finally, the material is distributed and exploited in a business-to-consumer as well as in a business-to-business model.

Table : Advantages and Disadvantages of Commercial Content Model

Advantages	Disadvantages
Generates revenue from commercial exploitation of some content.	There might appear issues about who will operate, coordinate, maintain and monitor this revenue model. Needs agreement with e-publishers and individual content providers

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