Improvements needed in personal health record usability

Haggstrom DA. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2011;doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2010-000082.

Issue: February 2012

Results of the first usability test of the MyHealtheVet program — the most widely disseminated personal health record system in the United States — indicate a need for improvements in usability.

“Users consistently highlighted potential opportunities for the [personal health records] to add value to existing information,” David A. Haggstrom, MD, of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and colleagues wrote in the study. “Furthermore, the individual user experiences captured by our usability methods highlighted how [personal health records] functions may be more precisely tailored to patient preferences. With these types of insights, health care systems may move closer to personalized health information technology.”

Haggstrom and colleagues assessed the MyHealtheVet program based on the performance of 24 first-time users with an average age of 55 years from the VA medical center.

Participants commonly used four functions of the program: registration, prescription refill, the health tracker and health information search.

Only 25% of participants successfully completed registration. Most participants had privacy concerns, expressed interest in printing their information to share with their doctors and questioned the value of the program when compared with existing online health information, according to the study.

“Understanding how first-time users interact with their personal health records will enable us to design and implement future-generation systems that will serve the needs of patients and those with whom they wish to share health information, including doctors and other trusted parties. Ultimately, it will help us, as physicians, provide better care for our patients,” Haggstrom said in a press release.

Disclosure: This research was supported by VA HSR&D project SHP 08-192.

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