Exploring Patients’ Use Intention of Personal Health Record Systems: Implications for Design

Abstract

Personal health record (PHR) systems offer a technology for personal health information management (PHIM) activities. Despite efforts to increase the use of PHR systems as a mechanism to support better patient-centered care and improve information management across the continuum of care, PHR adoption remains low. The purpose of this study was to explore how to design a PHR system that can adequately support personal health information management activities. Using a mixed-methods approach (questionnaires and interviews), we identified the factors affecting a person’s intention to use PHRs and also described the personal health information management activities among people from a wide age range in the United States. Results indicated that the intention to use PHR systems was affected by system-related factors, such as perceived usefulness, health information understandability, personalization, and patient–clinician communication support, and user-related factors, such as social influence, self-efficacy, and willingness to share. Furthermore, five types of personal health information management activities were found, including storage, organization, maintenance, retrieval, and sharing. Informed by the study findings, we developed seven design recommendations to improve PHR systems. Future studies can focus on further validating these findings using other methods and be based on larger and more representative PHR users.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

A. Ant Ozok

A. Ant Ozok is an associate professor of human–computer interaction at the University of Maryland. He specializes in cognitive engineering and user interface design for the Web, electronic and mobile commerce, and health care, co-chaired several international conferences, and is the author of internationally recognized and awarded journal articles.

Huijuan Wu

Huijuan Wu is a senior usability researcher at CommunicateHealth, Inc. She received her PhD in Information Systems from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She applies qualitative and quantitative methods to study diverse audiences, develop data-driven insights, and inform product design for U.S. government health agencies (e.g., HHS, CDC, and VA).

Ayse P. Gurses

Ayse Gurses is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University. She uses human factors and engineering methodologies to improve patient safety, health information technology design, and healthcare workers’ occupational health and safety. Ayse is the author/co-author of 45 journal publications and the PI/co-PI on around $6M in research funding.