An Analysis of US Academic Medical Center Websites: Usability Study.
Background: Health care organizations are tasked with providing web-based health resources and information. Usability refers to the ease of user experience on a website. In this study, we conducted a usability analysis of academic medical centers in the United States, which, to the best of our knowl...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Medical Internet Research Vol. 23; no. 12 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
JMIR Publications Inc.
Dec2021
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=154477044&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 154477044 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 14394456 DNC jtl: Journal of Medical Internet Research issn: 14394456 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2021 vid: 23 iid: 12 pid: 21567 pub: JMIR Publications Inc. place: Toronto, Ontario artinfo: ui: 154477044 154477044 NLM34932015 154477044 10.2196/27750 NLM34932015 154477044 ppct: 1 formats: tig: atl: An Analysis of US Academic Medical Center Websites: Usability Study. aug: au: Gale, Jonathan James Black, Kameron Collin Calvano, Joshua David Jr, Edwin Lauritz Fundingsland Lai, Deborah Silacci, Sara He, Shuhan Fundingsland, Edwin Lauritz Jr affil: 1 Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Parker, CO, United States sug: subj: Readability United States Academic Medical Centers Internet Human ab: Background: Health care organizations are tasked with providing web-based health resources and information. Usability refers to the ease of user experience on a website. In this study, we conducted a usability analysis of academic medical centers in the United States, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been previously carried out.Objective: The primary aims of the study were to the following: (1) adapt a preexisting usability scoring methodology to academic medical centers; (2) apply and test this methodology on a sample set of academic medical center websites; and (3) make recommendations from these results on potential areas of improvements for our sample of academic medical center websites.Methods: All website usability testing took place from June 1, 2020, to December 15, 2020. We replicated a methodology developed in previous literature and applied it to academic medical centers. Our sample included 73 US academic medical centers. Usability was split into four broad categories: accessibility (the ability of those with low levels of computer literacy to access and navigate the hospital's website); marketing (the ability of websites to be found through search engines and the relevance of descriptions to the links provided); content quality (grammar, frequency of information updates, material relevancy, and readability); and technology (download speed, quality of the programming code, and website infrastructure). Using these tools, we scored each website in each category. The composite of key factors in each category contributed to an overall "general usability" score for each website. An overall score was then calculated by applying a weighted percentage across all factors and was used for the final "overall usability" ranking.Results: The category with the highest average score was technology, with a 0.82 (SD 0.068, SE 0.008). The lowest-performing category was content quality, with an average of 0.22 (SD 0.069, SE 0.008). As these numbers reflect weighted percentages as an integer, the higher the score, the greater the overall usability in that category.Conclusions: Our data suggest that technology, on average, was the highest-scored variable among academic medical center websites. Because website functionality is essential to a user's experience, it is justified that academic medical centers invest in optimal website performance. The overall lowest-scored variable was content quality. A potential reason for this may be that academic medical center websites are usually larger in size, making it difficult to monitor the increased quantity of content. An easy way to improve this variable is to conduct more frequent website audits to assess readability, grammar, and relevance. Marketing is another area in which these organizations have potential for improvement. Our recommendation is that organizations utilize search engine optimization techniques to improve their online visibility and discoverability. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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