Using Usability Evaluation to Inform Alberta's Personal Health Record Design

Alberta Health is deploying the Personal Health Portal (PHP) (MyHealth.Alberta.ca) to all people in the province of Alberta, Canada. The PHP will include several components such as a Personal Health Record (PHR) where users can enter and access their own health data. For the first PHR of its kind in Canada, Alberta Health asked the University of Victoria's eHealth Observatory to evaluate the PHP, including the PHR. The evaluation includes pre-design, design, and adoption evaluation. This paper focuses on early usability evaluations of the PHR software. Persona-based usability inspection was combined with usability testing sessions using think aloud. These evaluations found that while people were familiar with the web-based technology, several aspects of the PHR information architecture, content, and presentation could be improved to better support and provide value to the users. The findings could be helpful to others designing and implementing similar PHR software.