A few years ago, the DOME consortium distributed a survey to Swedish patients about their use of Patient Accessible Electronic Health Records. The survey was quite long, and we have written a few papers on different aspects of it. This time the dream team working with the analysis consisted of Isto Huvila, Jonas Moll, Heidi Enwald, Kristina Eriksson-Backa and Hanife Rexhepi.
Patient Accessible Electronic Health Records (PAEHRs) are implemented globally to address challenges with an ageing population. However, little is known about age-related variation in PAEHR use, user perceptions of the PAEHR technology and the health record information, and how the technology and information–related perceptions are linked.
Data from a national patient survey (with 1,155 answers) of the Swedish PAEHR “Journalen” users were analysed. We developed an extended version of the theory of technological frames to explain the variation in the technological and informational framing of information technologies found in the data.
Our results suggest that younger respondents were more likely to be interested in PAEHR contents for overall interest. However, they did not value online access to the information as much as older people. Older respondents were inclined to use PAEHR to understand their health condition and prepare for visits. They also wanted to become involved in their healthcare and believe that technology has much potential. The oldest respondents were also more prone to consider the information in PAEHRs useful. But they experience technology as inherently difficult to use.
One can conclude that age should be taken into account as a critical factor that influences perceptions of the usefulness of PAEHRs.
You find the full paper here:
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