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BACKGROUND/RATIONALE:
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) launched in 2003 an innovative personal health record called My HealteVet (MHV). MHV is a nationwide initiative intended to improve the overall health of veterans and promote better communication between VHA patients and their providers. MHV is a secure web-based portal that offers patients access to trusted health information. Despite this initiation and an effective piloting of the program to over 50,000 veterans, there have been some delays in fostering system-wide implementation of the portal. Relatively little is known about the barriers and facilitators to the implementation.
OBJECTIVE(S):
The purpose of the proposed study is to identify factors impacting patient use of MHV and explore how to engage patients in the best use and navigation of MHV. For example, we are interested in which features of MHV do patients use/prefer/not prefer and investigate the barriers and facilitators of optimal use by patients.
METHODS:
The proposed study will employ a series of methods. We will first perform interviews with 6-8 patients to discover barriers and facilitators of MHV and suggested development to make it more useful. The results from these interviews will then directly inform the design of the usability testing scenarios. While there are multiple different types of usability testing available, the proposed study will use one of the most rigorous techniques by using a controlled laboratory simulation with a larger number of participants for statistical comparisons across usability design metrics. The simulation experiment will be conducted at the HCI/IT laboratory, which is located in the HSR&D Center for Implementing Evidence-Based Practice in Indianapolis. The HCI/IT laboratory is a closed setting, with a capacity to simulate a typical setting that a veteran may access MHV (i.e., a home office). We will record audio and two video sources, one of the computer screen and interaction and one of the each of the participants faces. Each participant will be given instructions to complete eight scenarios for MHV (e.g., fill prescriptions). The usability questionnaire will be administered after the participant finished all 8 scenarios. Will we use efficiency, error rate, and satisfaction as usability metrics. We will also record critical incidents (i.e., usability issues). A critical incident is something that happens while the participant is working that has a significant effect (negative or positive) on task performance or user satisfaction. Conclusions will be drawn from erroneous assumptions or actions, statements of confusion, tasks taking longer than anticipated.
FINDINGS/RESULTS:
No results at this time.
IMPACT:
With My HealtheVet (MHV), VHA is defining the state of the art for a patient-centered electronic medical record. However, as managers and policymakers of MHV are at the turning point or expanding the capabilities of MHV to deliver more services and provide communication from veterans to their physicians, information garnered from the proposed study will provide important data to help tailor the program so that more veterans can use MHV and those who do so will repeatedly use it. The proposed study will be particularly germane to the healthcare informatics priority area, a new HSR&D research area for fiscal year 2008. The proposed usability assessment will help guide managers and designers involved in the MHV implementation because a usability assessment is intended for rapid feedback to a design team so that the appropriate modifications can be made iteratively during the design cycle. Our proposed usability test could further identify attribute features such as task completion and error rate, all of which could improve functionality. The findings form the study should inform the design of strategies to enhance MHV implementation.
PUBLICATIONS:
None at this time.
DRA:
Chronic Diseases
DRE:
Quality of Care
Keywords:
Assessment
MeSH Terms:
Acute Disease
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