A boutique consulting firm, User Centric Inc., just released a brief report comparing the usability of the two leading Personal Health Platforms (PHP), or Health Clouds, Google Health (GHealth) and HealthVault (HV). While we may quibble with some of the inconsistencies in the report (e.g., state 30 participants but when breaking down by age group, they have 50 participants) and erroneous information (e.g., a nice feature that these PHRs should include is the ability to share the PHR with one’s physician – Huh?, both GHealth and HV each support this functionality already), there are some good bits of information tucked in the report on basic usability that is applicable to ALL PHR vendors.
So who won the usability survey…
According to the report, GHealth was the hands-down winner for Ease of Use and Usefulness/Utility by a wide margin. This is not any different than our own opinion, so not too surprising. HealthVault has made great strides since their initial launch, but clearly, they have much further to go.
HealthVault did not go home empty handed and was considered better than its Mountain View rivals on Security, Privacy and Trust by a slim margin. We found this to be unusual as we would have predicted a virtual tie as both companies have been very forthcoming on these important issues.
One caveat: The participants were heavily represented by those under 30yrs old. Yes, they are the Digital Natives and are leading most trends on the Internet, but no, they do not represent those most likely to adopt and use a PHR, families (mothers managing the health records of the family) or those with chronic conditions.
And one last key point: Survey participants stated that they only want to spend 10-30min setting up a PHR, after that they may update it monthly, or just once a year. This may be a by-product of the age group (most under 30) but 10-30min, is very little time to work with. Our guess is, if you make it an enjoyable experience, that 10-30min can readily be doubled.
Addendum:
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), as part of its Project Health Design (PHD), has done some great work (or at least those they have supported through grants) on the topic of creating truly useful (utility/ease of use), personal, and engaging Personal Health apps. It is difficult to call these apps PHRs as some of these apps are more limited, and others more expansive than what the traditional PHR term encompasses.
Just received an email today from the PHD team at RWJF. The PHD program has received a second round of funding and the PHD team is now looking to apply this funding, via grants, to encourage the development of apps that focus on “Observations of Daily Living” (OLD). The PHD team is seeking input, particularly from the private sector, (hurrah, we were a bit disappointed in lack of such in round one) as to how they should structure the grant proposal, both from an IP perspective and how data from OLD would be stored and shared. You’ll find out more over at their site and do encourage you to take a look while you are there at some of the videos they produced highlighting the work sponsored in round one.
And Another Addendum:
The publishers of the usabilty study have updated the report due to the error I had found yesterday regarding number of participants. Instead of 22 participants representing 18-21 age bracket in the origianl report, there were actually only 2. Thus, indeed there were 30 participants total, the under 30yrs old group representing 40% of total sample size, (which we find still not representative of actual adopters of these solutions).
The updated report is now available at the User Centric site.
[…] information tucked in the report on basic usability that is applicable to ALL PHR vendors.” Article John Moore, Chilmark Research, 2 February […]
“One caveat: The participants were heavily represented by those under 30yrs old. Yes, they are the Digital Natives and are leading most trends on the Internet, but no, they do not represent those most likely to adopt and use a PHR, families (mothers managing the health records of the family) or those with chronic conditions.”
John – GREAT POINT – caveat above- – discounts by a considerable amount, the findings in this study.
I have read through the study. I love these usability experts – they loose the big picture along the way to fastclicks. I know 30 somethings like to throw up their health records on the Facebook Wall – and find out 10 years from now they have been had by FB and Google.
“HealthVault did not go home empty handed and was considered better than its Mountain View rivals on Security, Privacy and Trust by a slim margin. We found this to be unusual as we would have predicted a virtual tie as both companies have been very forthcoming on these important issues.”
Here is the User Friendly Google behind the scenes – interesting – it calls out “GOOGLE” only.
Consumer Watchdog To Google: Publicly Disclose Your Lobbying Positions On Electronic Medical Record Provisions In Stimulus Bill – link below.
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=24594
Consumer Watchdog Calls on Google to Cease Lobbying Effort to Allow Sale of Patient Medical Records; Urges Congress to Adopt Privacy Protections in Economic Stimulus Bill – the link below
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=24489
Past the rhetoric of “disclosures” which anyone can indulge in – HEALTHVAULT is without question the better platform for those who will be the “real users” – the family health managers and caretakers- security and privacy stand out for them as No. 1 priority.
Let’s start these user centric evaluations over again with Security & Privacy as absolutes – and then start asking which PHR users prefer.
And good you pointed out the Project Health Design initiatives – that is the kind of stuff people should be following if they care to know the real parameters of excellence.
I’m glad our report is starting some conversation! However, I did want to try to clarify a few points that may be causing confusion.
On page 5 of the white paper, there was a rather unfortunate typo in the age breakdowns. It should say “2 of the participants were aged 18-21” rather than “22.” The total number of participants in the 30-or-younger bracket was only 12, or 40% of the total sample.
Also, in our recommendation that PHRs should include the ability to share information with one’s physician, we were aware that both GHealth and HV provided this feature. We simply wanted to highlight its value since our participants found this to be one of the most appealing reasons to use a PHR.
Finally, John, I think your comment predicting a tie on security/privacy/trust was quite insightful. Although HV was more often preferred when participants were forced to choose between the two PHRs, the white paper also details how their subjective ratings for those dimensions were extremely close.
@G – the consumer watchdog info you’re presenting is definitely interesting. But I think it’s also valuable to understand the perception of users who aren’t aware of any industry background. This is what we were trying to get at — what are people’s first impressions of the security of PHRs? And overall, participants were pretty confident with both of them.
@ Michael Niebling
“I think it’s also valuable to understand the perception of users who aren’t aware of any industry background. ”
Thank you for joining the conversation. And your clarifications. Agree perceptions are always the starting point in terms of security (even if it is clouded by user ignorance).
Sharing information is an absolute must – without which we will never see the real utility of PHRs. However, the controls and ownership of that shared information are also an absolute must. There are inherent deficiencies in Google Health (rooted in both their technology and business considerations) – but that is a debate for another time.
We need to move forward at a more accelerated pace to surfacing the issues around security & privacy – past the perception phase. Did not mean to sound harsh in my comments – that’s the dialogue I hope all of us can purse diligently.
The opportunity to move forward eHealth as “empowered edge participants” (via PHR, Personal Genome, etc) is a compelling one – and we must capitalize on these opportunities from the edge.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?renderforprint=1&id=3632&wit_id=7584
January 27, 2009
Written Testimony of
Michael Stokes
Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation?s Health Solutions Group
Before the
Senate Judiciary Committee
Hearing on Health IT: Protecting Americans’ Privacy in the Digital Age
With regrets for the error in participant counts, an updated version of the white paper has been released at http://www.usercentric.com/publications/2009/01/phr/.
Thank you for your feedback!
Thanks for the comments G & Michael,
Couple of points:
First, the whole “Consumer Watchdog” attack on Google was ill-founded. Talked to Google shortly after this announcement by the Consumer Watchdog group and needless to say, the folks in Mtn. View were a little upset. Following is the statement Google made repudiating Consumer Watchdog:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/01/consumer-watchdog-wrong-on-medical.html
Second, in the report Michael, did find most aspects misleading, at least as written, e.g. sharing records with physicians. Happy to hear that yes indeed, you know that capability is there. Also, an area that everyone seems to struggle with in this industry is how to create a service that is useful for the consumer, but can also be of value to the physician. Remains to be seen how this will sort out.
Lastly, and a point I failed to bring out in the post was how interested the participants were in the drug safety interaction checker. Quite an interesting insight.