- Title
- The e-health literacy demands of Australia's My Health Record: a heuristic evaluation of usability
- Creator
- Walsh, Louisa; Hemsley, Bronwyn; Allan, Meredith; Adams, Natalie; Balandin, Susan; Georgiou, Andrew; Higgins, Isabel; McCarthy, Shaun; Hill, Sophie
- Relation
- Perspectives in Health Information Management Vol. Fall, p. 1-23
- Relation
- http://perspectives.ahima.org/ehealthliteracydemands/
- Publisher
- American Health Information Management Association
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Background: My Health Record is Australia's electronic personal health record system which was introduced in July 2012. As of February 2017, approximately 19 percent of Australia's total population was registered to use MyHR. Internationally, usability issues have been shown to negatively impact the uptake and use of electronic health record systems, and this may particularly impact people who have low ehealth literacy. It is likely that usability issues are also negatively impacting the uptake and use of My Health Record in Australia. Objective: To identify potential ehealth literacy-related usability issues within My Health Record through a heuristic evaluation method. Methods: Between September 14 and October 12, 2016, three of the authors conducted a heuristic evaluation of the two consumer-facing components of the My Health Record-the information website, and the electronic health record itself. These two components were evaluated against two sets of heuristics-the Health Literacy Online checklist and the Monkman Heuristics. The Health Literacy Online checklist and Monkman Heuristics are evidence-based checklists of web design element with a focus on design for low health literacy audiences. During this heuristic evaluation, the investigators individually navigated through the consumer-facing components of My Health Record, recording instances where the My Health Record did not conform to the checklist criteria. After the individual evaluations were completed are the investigators conferred and aggregated their results. From this process, a list of usability violations were constructed. Results: When evaluated against the Health Literacy Online Checklist the information website demonstrated violations in 12 of 35 criteria, and the Record demonstrated violations in 16 of 35 criteria. When evaluated against the Monkman Heuristics the information website demonstrated violations in seven of the 11 criteria, and the Record demonstrated violations in nine of 11 criteria. The identified violations included usability issues with the reading levels used within My Health Record, the graphic design elements, the layout of webpages, and a lack of images and audio-visual tools to support learning. There are also important usability issues around a lack of translated resources, difficulty using accessibility tools and the complexity of the registration processes. Conclusion: My Health Record is an important piece of technology which has the potential to facilitate better communication between consumers and their health providers. However, this heuristic evaluation demonstrated that many of the usability elements of My Health Record cater poorly to users at risk of having low ehealth literacy. Usability issues have been identified as an important barrier to use of personal health records internationally and the findings of this heuristic evaluation demonstrate that it is likely that the usability issues may be a significant barriers to uptake and use of My Health Record.
- Subject
- electronic health records; health records; personal health records; health literacy; health communication; heuristics; consumer health information; medical informatics
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1399079
- Identifier
- uon:34528
- Identifier
- ISSN:1559-4122
- Language
- eng
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