Determinants of personal health record use: a large population study at Cleveland Clinic

While research in other domains leads us to expect that some patients will be more predisposed to technology adoption than others, the factors that indicate propensity for use are not clear. In this study, researchers extracted the demographic and usage information of 63,295 people who had registered to use eCleveland Clinic MyChart. Of those, 12,101 had never logged onto the system and were termed registered never users. Registered users are more likely to be Caucasian and married than registered never users. The only predictors of degree of PHR use among the registered users are number of diagnoses from the EMR problem list and the number of clinical encounters. Hence, Cleveland Clinic's PHR portal appears to be most useful to patients who are sicker and greater consumers of healthcare.