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Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers

BACKGROUND: Dementia is a progressive and highly disabling neurodegenerative disease that will likely become highly prevalent in the future due to the globally aging population. To improve health care efficiency and quality for dementia care, eHealth could help with, for example, an online portal, s...

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Autores principales: Hattink, Bart, Droes, Rose-Marie, Sikkes, Sietske, Oostra, Ellen, Lemstra, Afina W
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974452/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27444209
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/resprot.5040
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author Hattink, Bart
Droes, Rose-Marie
Sikkes, Sietske
Oostra, Ellen
Lemstra, Afina W
author_facet Hattink, Bart
Droes, Rose-Marie
Sikkes, Sietske
Oostra, Ellen
Lemstra, Afina W
author_sort Hattink, Bart
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Dementia is a progressive and highly disabling neurodegenerative disease that will likely become highly prevalent in the future due to the globally aging population. To improve health care efficiency and quality for dementia care, eHealth could help with, for example, an online portal, such as the Digital Alzheimer Center (DAC) of the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center Amsterdam. It provides up-to-date disease information, peer-to-peer contact, and methods for contacting the hospital and health professionals. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the usability and usefulness of the DAC for patients with dementia and carers to get insight into the feasibility and value of this eHealth app in dementia care and to recommend potential improvements. METHODS: A descriptive study among patients, carers, and health care professionals was performed. Mixed methods were used, consisting of observations (n=10, 4 people with dementia, 6 carers), an online survey (n=287; 88 patients, 199 carers), and semistructured interviews (n=18; 6 patients, 6 carers, 6 health care professionals). During the observations, participants performed a set of five different prescribed tasks on the portal. Speed, number of errors, and navigation were noted. The online survey aimed to assess users’ opinions on the portal’s usability and usefulness. Semistructured interviews were conducted in a subsample of patients, carers, and health care professionals to gain more in-depth information. RESULTS: In the usability assessment, eight categories of errors were distinguished, of which three were of critical, two of medium, and three of low severity. In the survey, 45% (40/88) of the patients and 53% (105/199) of the carers indicated they used the portal. In all, 33% (12/36) of patients and 61% (62/102) of carers found it easy to learn to work with the portal. Most considered the DAC generally useful: 65% (17/26) of patients and 78% (67/86) of carers found the DAC useful, especially for understanding dementia (patients: 64%, 16/25; carers: 62%, 53/86). In the semistructured interviews, the site was generally rated positively on usability and usefulness and being well designed. People with dementia and carers indicated it helped them to understand and deal with dementia. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the usability and usefulness of an Internet portal especially designed for people with dementia and their carers. An online patient portal could be a useful means to help to support patients and carers in dealing with dementia: the majority of users positively evaluated usability and usefulness of the portal, and appreciated the information on it. However, only a minority of patients found it easy to work with the portal. Good design and frequent usability testing is essential to offer a good online portal.
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spelling pubmed-49744522016-08-22 Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers Hattink, Bart Droes, Rose-Marie Sikkes, Sietske Oostra, Ellen Lemstra, Afina W JMIR Res Protoc Original Paper BACKGROUND: Dementia is a progressive and highly disabling neurodegenerative disease that will likely become highly prevalent in the future due to the globally aging population. To improve health care efficiency and quality for dementia care, eHealth could help with, for example, an online portal, such as the Digital Alzheimer Center (DAC) of the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center Amsterdam. It provides up-to-date disease information, peer-to-peer contact, and methods for contacting the hospital and health professionals. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the usability and usefulness of the DAC for patients with dementia and carers to get insight into the feasibility and value of this eHealth app in dementia care and to recommend potential improvements. METHODS: A descriptive study among patients, carers, and health care professionals was performed. Mixed methods were used, consisting of observations (n=10, 4 people with dementia, 6 carers), an online survey (n=287; 88 patients, 199 carers), and semistructured interviews (n=18; 6 patients, 6 carers, 6 health care professionals). During the observations, participants performed a set of five different prescribed tasks on the portal. Speed, number of errors, and navigation were noted. The online survey aimed to assess users’ opinions on the portal’s usability and usefulness. Semistructured interviews were conducted in a subsample of patients, carers, and health care professionals to gain more in-depth information. RESULTS: In the usability assessment, eight categories of errors were distinguished, of which three were of critical, two of medium, and three of low severity. In the survey, 45% (40/88) of the patients and 53% (105/199) of the carers indicated they used the portal. In all, 33% (12/36) of patients and 61% (62/102) of carers found it easy to learn to work with the portal. Most considered the DAC generally useful: 65% (17/26) of patients and 78% (67/86) of carers found the DAC useful, especially for understanding dementia (patients: 64%, 16/25; carers: 62%, 53/86). In the semistructured interviews, the site was generally rated positively on usability and usefulness and being well designed. People with dementia and carers indicated it helped them to understand and deal with dementia. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the usability and usefulness of an Internet portal especially designed for people with dementia and their carers. An online patient portal could be a useful means to help to support patients and carers in dealing with dementia: the majority of users positively evaluated usability and usefulness of the portal, and appreciated the information on it. However, only a minority of patients found it easy to work with the portal. Good design and frequent usability testing is essential to offer a good online portal. JMIR Publications 2016-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4974452/ /pubmed/27444209 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/resprot.5040 Text en ©Bart Hattink, Rose-Marie Droes, Sietske Sikkes, Ellen Oostra, Afina W Lemstra. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (http://www.researchprotocols.org), 21.07.2016. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Research Protocols, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.researchprotocols.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Hattink, Bart
Droes, Rose-Marie
Sikkes, Sietske
Oostra, Ellen
Lemstra, Afina W
Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers
title Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers
title_full Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers
title_fullStr Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers
title_full_unstemmed Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers
title_short Evaluation of the Digital Alzheimer Center: Testing Usability and Usefulness of an Online Portal for Patients with Dementia and Their Carers
title_sort evaluation of the digital alzheimer center: testing usability and usefulness of an online portal for patients with dementia and their carers
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974452/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27444209
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/resprot.5040
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