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Frequently Asked Questions and Answers



1. What benefits does myADHD.com offer to users?

MyADHD.com is the only site of its kind on the Internet. Harvey C. Parker, Ph.D., author, clinician and co-founder of CHADD, and the myADHD.com team, developed this site in 2002 to help caregivers in the assessment and management of children, adolescents, and adults affected by ADHD. Since it's inception, over 250,000 forms have been electronically transmitted and downloaded by health care providers, educators, parents, and adults.

Doctors and other health providers will benefit by having an inexpensive and efficient way to communicate with other stakeholders in the treatment of patients with ADHD. For example, a provider doing an assessment can easily send a history form, behavior rating scales, disorder checklists, and other forms to families to complete. Once received these forms can be completed manually or electronically (Premium plan only) and sent back to the provider electronically or physically. The Premium plan subscriber receives the completed form immediately and is notified by e-mail when the form arrives in his account. For Premium plan subscribers the information is stored in their provider’s private, secure account.

Parents can more easily than ever play an active role in the treatment program for their child. Parents can subscribe to myADHD.com and have, literally at their fingertips, the tools they need to track their child’s progress and improve performance. For example, a parent who is concerned if their child’s medication is working well can send a tracking form to the child’s teacher by email and receive feedback from the teacher. The completed form can be emailed or given to the child’s doctor for review to see if there is room for improvement in the child’s performance.

Adults with ADHD have assessment and tracking tools specially tailored to adult issues and an assortment of treatment tools to use to develop skills in time management, organization, budgeting, self-control, communication, etc.

Educators can use the assessment and tracking tools on the site in much the same way providers and parents can. In addition, educators may be particularly interested in the many treatment tools that can be printed and used in the classroom or with families at home to improve behavior, socialization, study skills, anger management, organization, etc.

Besides the many tools on the site, myADHD.com provides extremely valuable information about ADHD and related disorders. You can find this information in About ADHD and in the Library.

2. Why is a site such as myADHD.com important?

Interest in ADHD has soared over the past fifteen years and there is a better understanding among health professionals, educators, parents, and adults with ADHD about the appropriate methods of diagnosis and treatment for this condition. Those with ADHD are helped by the results of numerous scientific studies that have shown the benefit of multi-modal treatment programs. The MTA (Multimodal Treatment of ADHD) study, completed in 1999, showed that children suffering from ADHD benefit most when a combination of therapies including medication, parent training, and school and home-based interventions were used. In this study, with carefully monitored treatment adjusted to the individual needs of the child, the majority of children receiving this combination therapy improved substantially. Unfortunately, those children who were not closely monitored, despite the fact that they may have received medication and other therapies to treat their ADHD, did not reach maximal improvement. These results show that treatment for ADHD can be highly effective, but it must be closely monitored and adjusted to meet an individual's needs.

Costs of health care, inadequate insurance coverage, time required to closely monitor treatment effects, delays in communication between doctors and teachers, and lack of instruments to assess and track progress, and misunderstanding about treatment options are among the obstacles that can block optimal care. Realizing this, the developers of myADHD.com set out to design an Internet solution to overcome some of these obstacles. The result is a site that quickly, easily, and inexpensively connects doctors, educators, parents, and adults with ADHD and provides tools to assess, track, and treat this condition. By using these tools, stakeholders will have at their fingertips (computer keyboard) the tools they need to make appropriate decisions to optimize treatment for ADHD.

3. What makes this site so different from the thousands of other sites about ADHD on the Internet?

There is no other ADHD site on the Internet that provides the level of interaction and practicality that myADHD.com does. There are countless sites that provide information about ADHD. MyADHD.com goes way beyond that. It provides a method that physicians, psychologists, counselors, parents, educators, and adults with ADHD can use to communicate more effectively with one another. The use of these tools can improve assessment, tracking, and treatment procedures. Innovative Internet technology allows a Premium Annual Subscriber to send and receive rating scales electronically and to store completed scales in a secure, private account.

4. What is the difference between a Family Premium Annual Subscription and a Professional Premium Annual Subscription?

No difference. Just the price. We have tried to keep the subscription cost of myADHD.com as low as possible. We offer two levels of subscriptions. Family Subscriptions are less expensive than Professional Subsciptions because a family will undoubtedly use the myADHD.com tools much less often. Access to our Subscriber Administration Page is available to both the Family and Professional Premium subscriber.

Both subscriptions provide access to all of the tools on the myADHD.com site. Subscribers to the Family Premium Subscription plan have all the privileges of the Professional Premium Subscription plan subscribers including use of the Subscriber Administration Page. This is a unique feature of the site in that it allows subscribers to view assessment and tracking forms online, fill them in online, and email a link to others containing forms to complete. After a form is completed it is sent back to the subscriber and the completed form is stored in the subscriber’s secure, private account throughout the term of their subscription. Completed forms can also be printed as hard copies or can be emailed to others. There is no limit to the number of forms that can be viewed, emailed, or completed in either of the Premium Subscription plans. When a subscription expires the subscriber is sent an email with the option to renew.

5. What is the difference between an assessment tool and a tracking tool?

In general, assessment tools are more comprehensive scales and forms that can be used in the diagnostic process to determine if an individual has symptoms of ADHD and/or other disorders and if there is impairment in classroom performance or home or social adjustment. The purpose of the tracking tool is to monitor treatment effects. Tracking tools specifically measure ADHD symptom severity and performance and multiple measures are taken at regular intervals.

6. Is myADHD.com a secure site?

MyADHD.com is a secure site from the moment you go to the home page and succeeding steps though the site. The Subscriber Admin has been designed to be totally secure from the client through to the server. Login to the account and all activity in the account itself is protected via Thawte-signed 1024-bit Secure Site License (SSL). SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a technology for managing the security of online message transmission. SSL encrypts or scrambles any information sent from your browser to the server you are connected to, making it impossible to intercept or steal information on the way. This means that all data to and from myADHD.com is highly encrypted so that no one can snoop on the information unless they are looking over your shoulder. When information is submitted in our Subscriber Administration forms, the data is saved in a MySQL database in encrypted form, so even snoops on the server end cannot determine what answers you provided on the forms. Lastly, measures have been taken to automatically terminate logged-in sessions after ten minutes of inactivity and will require the member to log in again. Despite our best efforts to safeguard information on this site, users should be aware that security cannot be 100% guaranteed.

7. How do you know that the site you are visiting uses SSL encryption to secure your details?

SSL goes along with a Web Server Certificate that proves that the owner of the online business is who he says he is. The certificate can be viewed by clicking on the padlock in the bottom right-hand corner of your browser. This padlock will only imply SSL encryption. The big problem is that you do not know who is on the other side receiving your information. myADHD.com is certified by Thawte (www.thawte.com), an online security business that decided to do something about this very problem. Thawte performs stringent checks on businesses applying for certificates to ensure that they are a legal entity.Thawte offers a thorough process of authentication before we provide a business with a digital certificate. It will always imply that the organization named in the certificate has the right to use the domain name included in the certificate, that the organization named in the certificate is a legal entity and that the individual who requested the SSL certificate on behalf of the organization was authorized to do so.

8. How about information stored on the myADHD.com server? Is this secure?

Information from completed assessment and tracking tools that is stored in our Premium Subscriber's private account is secure and encrypted to protect it. However, despite our efforts to make certain your information is safe and private no one can guarantee that 100%.

9. Do the privacy and security safeguards provided by myADHD.com meet the security standards for the electronic transmission of health care information published by HIPAA?

The law known as “HIPAA” stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Congress passed this landmark law to provide consumers with greater access to health care insurance, to protect the privacy of health care data, and to promote more standardization and efficiency in the health care industry. Under this rule, health plans, payers, clearinghouses, and certain health care providers must establish procedures and mechanisms to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronic Protected Health Information (PHI). Most covered entities will have two full years – until April 21, 2005 -- to comply with the standards; small health plans will have an additional year to comply.

Health Link Systems, Inc. has taken reasonable and prudent steps to make certain that health information transmitted and stored on the myADHD.com site is secure (see above descriptions pertaining to security features). It is the obligation of HIPAA covered entities using the site to also make certain that access to their private myADHD.com account is protected (i.e. passwords kept private), that appropriate log-off procedures are used, that hard copies of health information are printed as back-up in the event of failure of electronic systems, and that appropriate releases of information are obtained to authorize sharing of protected health information.

For additional information about HIPAA: http://www.cms.gov/hipaa/hipaa2/education/infoserie

10. How can technical support be contacted?

myADHD.com's technical support staff can be reached by e-mail. On the bottom of this page you will find a link to our support staff. Let us know the nature of your support need (billing question, sales issue, technical issue, etc.) and create a support ticket using myADHD.com's support technology. We will get you an answer within 24 hours.


11. How can my company use a Purchase Order or check to purchase a subscription to myADHD.com?

Most subscribers will purchase subscriptions directly via the website using a credit card. However, subscriptions can also be purchased via check or through an institutional purchase order. Send the check or purchase order to: Health Link Systems, Inc., c/o Parker, 3150 Willow Lane, Weston, Florida 33331 and specifiy whether you are purchasing a Family Premium Annual Subscription or a Professional Premium Annual Subscription . Once we receive your check or signed institutional purchase order you will receive a coupon by e-mail if you provide your e-mail address). The subscription is valid for one year. To activate this subscription, go to www.myadhd.com, login or register as a new user, then select the subscription you have purchased. Instead of entering your credit card information for payment, enter the coupon number that was provided to you by mail. Your subscription will be activated without any additional fees. If you have any questions please contact www.myadhd.com.