Studies in health technology and informatics · 2015 · 11 citations · 0 references
ComputingHealth InformaticsElectronic Health RecordsHealth Information SystemsUser Experience DesignExperience DesignHealth Information EvaluationPersonal Health RecordsUsability EngineeringUsability EvaluationUsability TestingAdoption EvaluationHealth Information Technology UsabilityHealth Information UsabilityHealth Record UsabilitySystem UsabilityUsability StudiesWeb-based Health Information EvaluationWebsite Usability Evaluation
Alberta Health is deploying the Personal Health Portal (PHP) (MyHealth.Alberta.ca) to all people in the province of Alberta, Canada. The PHP will include several components such as a Personal Health Record (PHR) where users can enter and access their own health data. For the first PHR of its kind in Canada, Alberta Health asked the University of Victoria's eHealth Observatory to evaluate the PHP, including the PHR. The evaluation includes pre-design, design, and adoption evaluation. This paper focuses on early usability evaluations of the PHR software. Persona-based usability inspection was combined with usability testing sessions using think aloud. These evaluations found that while people were familiar with the web-based technology, several aspects of the PHR information architecture, content, and presentation could be improved to better support and provide value to the users. The findings could be helpful to others designing and implementing similar PHR software.