The Role of Computer Skills in Personal Health Record Adoption Among Patients With Heart Disease: Multidimensional Evaluation of Users Versus Nonusers

BACKGROUND: In the era of precision medicine, it is critical for health communication efforts to prioritize personal health record (PHR) adoption. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to describe the characteristics of patients with heart disease that choose to adopt a PHR. METHODS: A total of 79 patients with chronic cardiovascular disease participated in this study: 48 PHR users and 31 nonusers. They completed 5 surveys related to their choice to use or not use the PHR: demographics, patient activation, medication adherence, health literacy, and computer self-efficacy (CSE). RESULTS: There was a significant difference between users and nonusers in the sociodemographic measure education (P=.04). There was no significant difference between users and nonusers in other sociodemographic measures: age (P=.20), sex (P=.35), ethnicity (P=.43), race (P=.42), and employment (P=.63). There was a significant difference between PHR users and PHR nonusers in CSE (P=.006). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we demonstrate that sociodemographic characteristics were not an important factor in patients’ use of their PHR, except for education. This study had a small sample size and may not have been large enough to detect differences between groups. Our results did demonstrate that there is a difference between PHR users and nonusers related to their CSE. This work suggests that incorporating CSE into the design of PHRs is critical. The design of patient-facing tools must take into account patients’ preferences and abilities when developing effective user-friendly health information technologies.