Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Mar 31, 2023
Date Accepted: Nov 20, 2023
Usability of an app for medical history taking in general practice from the patients’ perspective: Cross sectional study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital tools offer great potential to improve patient care. Designed to collect patients’ medical histories, they can support physicians to obtain a medical history before consultation and relieve from documentation work. This is important given the increasing workload resulting from the emerging shortage of physicians in Germany. Low usability of new digital developments often hinders their implementation, though. We evaluated the usability of an app designed for medical history taking in general practice.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to evaluate the usability of an app designed for medical history taking in general practice.
Methods:
Between November 2021 and January 2022 we aimed to recruit 400 participants to complete an app for taking medical history. Participants were recruited in seven general practices and one out-of-hour urgent care practice in Germany. The app consists of dynamic questionnaires based on stated complaints of the patient. To assess the usability of the app patients completed the System Usability Scale (SUS) after medical history taking. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to identify patient characteristics with low or high SUS scores.
Results:
Data from 397 patients was analyzed (56.7% female, 43.3% male). The mean total SUS score was 77.8 points; 54.4% of participants had SUS scores of 80 points or higher indicating a high usability of the app. In a multiple linear regression predicting SUS score, higher age (65 years or older) and male gender were significantly negatively associated with the SUS score, while a higher health literacy score and German as native language were significantly positively associated with the SUS score.
Conclusions:
The usability testing based on the SUS, as well as the comparison with other commonly used apps, anticipates the possibility of successful implementation. However, not all people get on equally well with the app and certain characteristics seem to lead to a lower subjectively perceived usability. Further research should examine these groups of people, identify the exact problems in operating such an app and provide solutions. Thus, everyone can benefit from the implementation of such a tool. Clinical Trial: The study was registered at the German Clinical Trials Register (No. DRKS00026659 registered Nov 03 2021. World Health Organization Trial Registration Data Set, https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx?TrialID=DRKS00026659
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