Assessment of user satisfaction with an internet-based integrated patient education system for diabetes management

The purpose of this study was to evaluate patient satisfaction with an Internet-based integrated patient education system, and to identify the components of the system that affect patient satisfaction. The system has been operating in a university-affiliated hospital for outpatients with diabetes. For each patient visit, the system integrates his/her pharmaceutical education materials and medical care records such as laboratory test results, medication prescriptions and next visit appointments, into an individual medical folder. The integrated medical folders are then transformed into web structures for continuing patient education after leaving the hospital. The patients can easily access the knowledge required for medication care through the internet. In order to assess the satisfaction of patients with the system, we use the questionnaire developed by Doll and Torkzadeh for the measurement of end-user computing satisfaction, and translate it into Chinese. There were 81 participants selected from Diabetes patient who had used the system involved in the questionnaire survey. 50 participants returned their questionnaires. After analysis of the returned questionnaires, over 70% of patients were satisfied with the content, accuracy, format and timeliness of information provided by this system, and agreed easy of use with the system. This study also revealed that patient satisfaction was highly positively correlated with the number of logons and the number of accesses to the web pages. According to users' responses, information content and format of reports should be more flexible. The patients and their care giver would like to choose and combine the information to redesign the format of reports by themselves. Some of patient's family point "easy of use" is important for the senior patients. They mention all of the information should be at the same page, because the senior patients couldn't manipulate complicated procedure. Furthermore, both of privacy and security also were important issue in connection with patient satisfaction. Future research should explore and identify additional components of satisfaction that are specific to a web-based environment.