JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The electronic health record (EHR) is fully established by all Norwegian hospitals. To date, online access to EHR is offered to patients by two of the four health regions in Norway. Patient accessible electronic health record (PAEHR) is available to citizens aged 16 and older through the national health portal helsenorge.no.

Objective:

This study aims at understanding how patients use online access to their EHR. Three research questions were addressed in order to explore: (1) the characteristics of the users; (2) patients’ use of the service; and (3) patients’ experiences with the service.

Methods:

An online survey of users who accessed their EHR online at least once. Quantitative data were supplemented by qualitative information.

Results:

A total of 1037 respondents participated to the survey, most of which accessed their EHR online regularly (30%) or when necessary (29%). Service utilization was associated with self-reported health, age, gender, education and health background. Patients found the service useful to look up health information (88%), keep track of their treatment (88%), prepare for a hospital appointment (64%) and share documents with their GP (38%) or family (25%). Most users found it easy to access their EHR online (93%) and did not encounter technical challenges. The vast majority of the respondents (85.7%) understood most of the content, despite over half of them acknowledged some difficulties with medical terms or phrases. The overall satisfaction with the service was very high (92.7%). Clinical advantages included enhanced knowledge of their health condition (81.8%), easier keeping track of their health status (92.6%), better self-care (87.4%), greater empowerment (73.1%), easier communication with health care providers (79.8%) and increased safety (89.7%). Patients with complex, long-term or chronic conditions seemed to benefit the most. PAEHR was described as useful, informative, effective, helpful, easy, practical, and safe.

Conclusions:

PAEHR in Norway is becoming a mature service and is perceived as useful by patients. Future studies should include experimental designs focused on specific populations or chronic conditions which are more likely to achieve clinically meaningful benefits. Continuous evaluation programs should be conducted to evaluate implementation and changes of wide-scale routine services over time.