Boissy Patrick, Jacobs Karen, Roy Serge H
Research Centre on Aging, Sherbrooke Geriatric University Institute, Sherbrooke, Canada.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2006 Dec 21;6:42. doi: 10.1186/1472-6947-6-42.
Throughout the medical and paramedical professions, self-report health status questionnaires are used to gather patient-reported outcome measures. The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate in individuals over 60 years of age the usability of a PDA-based barcode scanning system with a text-to-speech synthesizer to collect data electronically from self-report health outcome questionnaires.
Usability of the system was tested on a sample of 24 community-living older adults (7 men, 17 women) ranging in age from 63 to 93 years. After receiving a brief demonstration on the use of the barcode scanner, participants were randomly assigned to complete two sets of 16 questions using the bar code wand scanner for one set and a pen for the other. Usability was assessed using directed interviews with a usability questionnaire and performance-based metrics (task times, errors, sources of errors).
Overall, participants found barcode scanning easy to learn, easy to use, and pleasant. Participants were marginally faster in completing the 16 survey questions when using pen entry (20/24 participants). The mean response time with the barcode scanner was 31 seconds longer than traditional pen entry for a subset of 16 questions (p = 0.001). The responsiveness of the scanning system, expressed as first scan success rate, was less than perfect, with approximately one-third of first scans requiring a rescan to successfully capture the data entry. The responsiveness of the system can be explained by a combination of factors such as the location of the scanning errors, the type of barcode used as an answer field in the paper version, and the optical characteristics of the barcode scanner.
The results presented in this study offer insights regarding the feasibility, usability and effectiveness of using a barcode scanner with older adults as an electronic data entry method on a PDA. While participants in this study found their experience with the barcode scanning system enjoyable and learned to become proficient in its use, the responsiveness of the system constitutes a barrier to wide-scale use of such a system. Optimizing the graphical presentation of the information on paper should significantly increase the system's responsiveness.
在整个医学和辅助医疗行业，自我报告健康状况问卷被用于收集患者报告的结局指标。这项初步研究的目的是评估在60岁以上个体中，基于个人数字助理（PDA）的条形码扫描系统与文本转语音合成器结合使用，从自我报告健康结局问卷中电子收集数据的可用性。
在24名年龄在63至93岁之间的社区居住老年人（7名男性，17名女性）样本上测试了该系统的可用性。在接受关于条形码扫描仪使用的简短演示后，参与者被随机分配使用条形码棒扫描仪完成两组16个问题，一组使用笔完成另一组。使用可用性问卷和基于性能的指标（任务时间、错误、错误来源）通过定向访谈评估可用性。
总体而言，参与者发现条形码扫描易于学习、易于使用且令人愉快。使用笔输入时，20/24的参与者在完成16个调查问题上略快。对于16个问题的一个子集，条形码扫描仪的平均响应时间比传统笔输入长31秒（p = 0.001）。以首次扫描成功率表示的扫描系统响应性并不理想，大约三分之一的首次扫描需要重新扫描才能成功捕获数据输入。系统的响应性可以通过多种因素的组合来解释，如扫描错误的位置、纸质版本中用作答案字段的条形码类型以及条形码扫描仪的光学特性。
本研究呈现的结果提供了关于在老年人中使用条形码扫描仪作为PDA上电子数据输入方法的可行性、可用性和有效性的见解。虽然本研究中的参与者发现他们使用条形码扫描系统的体验令人愉快，并学会了熟练使用它，但系统的响应性构成了这种系统广泛使用的障碍。优化纸质信息的图形呈现应能显著提高系统的响应性。
