Using Tablet Computers to Increase Patient Engagement With Electronic Personal Health Records: Protocol For a Prospective, Randomized Interventional Study

BACKGROUND: Inadequate patient engagement in care is a major barrier to successful transitions from the inpatient setting and can lead to preventable adverse events after discharge, particularly for older adults. While older adults may be less familiar with mobile devices and applications, they may benefit from focused bedside training to engage them in using their Personal Health Record (PHR). Mobile technologies such as tablet computers can be used in the hospital to help bridge this gap in experience by teaching older, hospitalized patients to actively manage their medication list through their PHR during hospitalization and continue to use their PHR for other post-discharge tasks such as scheduling follow-up appointments, viewing test results, and communicating with providers. Bridging this gap is especially important for older, hospitalized adults as they are at higher risk than younger populations for low engagement in transitions of care and poor outcomes such as readmission. Greater understanding of the advantages and limitations of mobile devices for older adults may be important for improving transitions of care. OBJECTIVE: To better understand the effective use of mobile technologies to improve transitions in care for hospitalized, older adults and leverage these technologies to improve inpatient and postdischarge care for older adults. METHODS: We will compare an intervention group with tablet-based training to engage effectively with their PHR to a control group also receiving tablets and basic access to their PHR but no additional training on how to engage with their PHR. RESULTS: Patient enrollment is ongoing. CONCLUSIONS: Through this grant, we will further develop our preliminary dataset and practical experience with these mobile technologies to catalyze patient engagement during hospitalization. CLINICALTRIAL: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02109601; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02109601 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6jpXjkwM8)