| Description |
A touchscreen information kiosk was implemented to address patient concerns of not receiving enough health information from their healthcare providers. Included in this kiosk was a remote control assistance feature, which allowed a help-giver to view and take control of the kiosk from another computer. Four research questions were addressed in this paper: 1) Will patients use a touchscreen kiosk to look for health information? 2) Is online patient assistance using remote control a feasible alternative to help given in person by healthcare staff? 3) Does remote control assistance improve the patient's experience with the kiosk? and 4) What are the ramifications of using remote control technology for patients, librarians, healthcare providers, and system developers? The methods were largely qualitative and structured around the four research questions. Limited quantitative analysis was performed through a counterbalanced, repeated measures study done at an outpatient clinic (subjects = 64) to examine whether remote control assistance improved patients' experiences with kiosk use. The study found that: 1) High scores on patient questionnaires indicated general satisfaction with and acceptance of the touchscreen kiosk (median scores of fours and fives on a five-point Likert scale). 2) When asked to compare remote control assistance against other ways of receiving health information, patients rated it higher (median scores of fours and fives) against all other methods (e.g., brochures, television, friends, Internet) except against physicians or other health providers (median score of three). 3) Based on patient questionnaires, remote assistance improved their satisfaction, increased ease of use, and raised the number of appropriate document retrieved from 5.5% to 86.7%, It was found that remote assistance gave patients convenient access to the librarians' skills and encourages them to become active seekers of their own educational materials. Such encouragement could have long-term impacts for creating a better-informed patient population. As compared to routine assistance give over the telephone, librarians using remote control were providing better service while spending the same time per patient. For healthcare provider, the remote kiosk can complement their existing arsenal of patient education resources. Further studies are recommended to explore other aspects of remote control assistance for patient education kiosks. |
