Independent Study: Personal Health Records

Challenge

To understand adoption rates of online personal health records (PHRs), User Centric conducted an independent comparative usability study to obtain real user feedback about three existing online personal health record applications, Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and MyMedicalRecords.com.

UC Approach

During this study, participants completed key tasks using each PHR application and provided qualitative feedback, ratings and preference data on five specific dimensions: overall usability, utility (usefulness of features), security, privacy and trust.

As a follow-up to the PHR usability test, User Centric conducted an online survey to gather further data on attitudes towards PHRs, including the usefulness of potential PHR features (e.g., sharing information with a physician, learning about side effects to medications).

Results

Conducting usability tests on popular PHRs allowed User Centric to get a closer, more studied perspective on the user experience of PHRs as well as their most valuable features and functions.

The majority of participants found PHRs to be useful and showed interest in building their own PHRs after the study. Overall, participants indicated Google Health utilized more familiar medical terminology, preferred the constant presence of the health information profile summary as well as easier navigation and data entry. One critical survey observation was that respondents were not prepared to invest a large amount of time configuring and/or updating the PHR. This highlighted the importance of the PHR user experience to adoption; if data entry is difficult or inefficient, then the PHR may not be worth the user’s time.

While none of the PHRs had a perfect interaction model, the wealth of user data collected was used to develop a list of best practices for PHR implementation. User Centric encourages further validation of the preliminary ideas suggested.

Download full study or read the entire list of best practices for PHRs.

(This was an independent study fully funded by User Centric. Google, Microsoft, and MyMedicalRecods.com did not commission or participate in this study.)