JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Currently, patient engagement is a worldwide trend in health care. Patient portals have the potential to increase patients’ knowledge about their health and care and therefore enhance patient engagement. Portal users’ experiences are needed to determine if these portals work appropriately and if there are some barriers to achieving the aims set when these portals were implemented.

Objective:

To study pharmacy customers’ experiences of benefits, problems, and potential improvements to the Finnish nationwide patient portal, My Kanta.

Methods:

A questionnaire survey was conducted among pharmacy customers in spring 2019. The questionnaires (n=2866) were distributed from 18 community pharmacies across mainland Finland to customers aged ≥18 who were purchasing prescription medicines for themselves or their child aged <18. Customers’ experiences of benefits, problems, and potential improvements that could be made to My Kanta were asked via open-ended questions. The answers were encoded and categorized using inductive content analysis, stored in the SPSS Statistics for Windows, and analyzed using frequencies.

Results:

A total of 994 (34.7%) questionnaires were included. Most respondents were My Kanta users (820/994, 82.5%); of them, 667 (81.3%) reported at least one benefit, 311 (37.8%) at least one problem, and 327 (39.9%) at least one potential improvement when using My Kanta. The most commonly stated benefits were opportunities to view health data (290/667, 43.5%) and prescriptions (247/667, 37.0%) and renew prescriptions (220/667, 33.0%). The most extensively reported problems were that My Kanta is lacking health data (71/311, 22.8%), navigating in the service and searching for information is difficult (68/21.9%), and health data enter the service with a delay (41/311, 13.2%). The most commonly suggested potential improvements were that there should be more comprehensive health data in My Kanta (89/327, 27.2%), navigating in the service and searching for information should be facilitated (71/327, 21.7%), there should be more functions in the service (51/327, 15.6%), and health data should enter the portal more promptly (47/327, 14.4%).

Conclusions:

Pharmacy customers experience more benefits than problems or potential improvements in the use of My Kanta. The service is beneficial for viewing health data and prescriptions and for renewing prescriptions. However, portal users wish that there were more data and functions available in the portal and that searching for data in the service would be easier. These improvements could facilitate the utilizing the data and functions available in the portal and hence promote patient engagement.