Designing a personal health record to achieve behavioural change

Authors

  • F. Fylan
  • L. Caveney
  • R. Nichells
  • T. Shannon

Abstract

Background: A Personal Health Record (PHR) is an electronic record that individuals use to manage and share their health information, e.g. data from their medical records and data collected by apps. This research explores beliefs potential users have about a PHR, how they would use it and barriers to its use. Methods: A qualitative design comprising eight different focus groups, each with 6-8 participants. Groups included adults with long-term health conditions, young people, physically active adults, data experts, and members of the voluntary sector. Each group lasted 60-90 minutes, was audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. We analysed the data using thematic analysis to address the question “What are individuals’ beliefs about a Personal Health Record?†Findings: We found four themes. Making it work for me is about how to encourage individuals to actively engage with their PHR. I control my information is about individuals deciding what to share and who to share it with. How to reassure me is about individuals’ concerns, including how secure their information is and whether healthcare professionals would act upon their information. Potential impact shows the PHR has the potential to increase self-efficacy when managing health conditions and when undertaking health-protective behaviours, and it could enable healthcare professionals to make greater use of psychosocial information such how lifestyle and life events affect an individual’s health and their capacity for behaviour change. Discussion: This research provides insight into why previous PHRs failed and how a future PHR should be designed to maximise the behavioural change achieved.

Published

2016-12-31

Issue

Section

Oral presentations