Patient-Administered Access Control: A Usability Study

Patient-controlled health records (PCHRs) allow patients complete control over their health information. They decide who to share their information with, which makes the patient the administrator of access control. While PCHRs have a great potential for patient empowerment, they have an equally great risk for breach of privacy if consequences of sharing are not completely clear to the patient. This paper presents results from a usability evaluation study that compares three different visual interfaces for sharing in a PCHR. The goal of this study was to investigate how users understand and react to the concept of sharing. The study found that when given the opportunity to do so the users wanted to exercise detailed control. The study also indicated that defined templates for sharing in a PCHR has a lot of authority as users assume them to be created by experts and therefore "correct".