Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: May 5, 2020
Date Accepted: Apr 22, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Computer Skills Drive Personal Health Record Adoption: A Multi-dimensional Evaluation of Users versus Non-Users
ABSTRACT
Background:
In the era of precision medicine, it is critical for health communication efforts to improve the comprehension level of the complex information being presented in the personal health record (PHR).
Objective:
To assess and understand the characteristics associated with patients’ choice to use or not use their PHR.
Methods:
A diverse group of patients with chronic cardiovascular disease was selected to participate in this study. They were screened by race, ethnicity, sex, age and zip code, specifically. Seventy-nine patients participated: 48 PHR users and 31 non-users. They completed seven surveys related to their choice to use or not use the PHR: demographics, patient activation, medication adherence, health literacy, computer self-efficacy, numeracy and graph literacy.
Results:
There is no significant difference between users and non-users in sociodemographic measures: age (P=0.17), sex (P=0.35), education (P=0.068), ethnicity (P=0.43), race (P=0.42), and employment (P=0.75). There is a significant difference between PHR users and PHR non-users in computer self-efficacy (P=0.0053), subjective graph literacy (P=0.0073), subjective numeracy scale (P=0.0074).
Conclusions:
In this study, we demonstrate that sociodemographic characteristics were not an important factor in patients’ use of their PHR. Our results did demonstrate that there is a difference between PHR users and non-users related to their computer self-efficacy (CSE), graph literacy, and numeracy. This work suggests that incorporating CSE and graph literacy into the design of PHRs is critical. The design of patient facing tools must take into account patients’ preferences and abilities when developing effective user-friendly health information technologies (HIT). Clinical Trial: NA
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