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Design and Development of a Personal Health Record System for Prostate Cancer Patients

There is a growing demand to involve patients in their own healthcare. Personal Health Records are among the most promising tools for this purpose. However, these tools need to meet patients’ needs and interests in order to be fully adopted and successfully used. This study takes a user centered design approach to design and develop a personal health record for prostate cancer patients by involving them in two main activities of a user centered design: requirements gathering and evaluation. The first phase of the study uses content analysis to analyze interviews with patients and elicit their needs and concerns. Results of this phase showed that patient’s information needs are different depending on the stage of the disease. Before starting treatment, patients are more interested in information about different methods of treatment and their potential side effects. However, after treatment, patients mostly need information about the management of treatment complications and the long term follow ups of their disease. Results also showed that the Internet is the most common information source for patients to find information. However, patients expressed concerns regarding the credibility and reliability of information they found on the Internet. The majority of patients also showed interest in accessing their medical records. However, some patients were concerned about the understandability of the information. Also, there was some concern regarding electronic access to medical records and security of personal data. The findings from phase one are used in phase two to modify a preliminary prototype of the system. In phase three, the modified prototype is evaluated by undergoing usability testing. Overall, the results of usability testing showed that the system was generally useful and easy to use. However, a number of issues were identified that could be resolved in the next iteration of its design and development. / Graduate / 0984

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/5085
Date16 December 2013
CreatorsRazavi, Avesta
ContributorsKushniruk, Andre W.
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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