Department of Family Medicine, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
The Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Telemed J E Health. 2020 May;26(5):603-613. doi: 10.1089/tmj.2019.0065. Epub 2019 Jul 9.
Age and race disparities in the use of new technologies-the digital divide-may be limiting the potential of patient-facing health information technology to improve health and health care. To investigate whether disparities exist in the use of patient portals designed specifically for the inpatient environment. Patients admitted to the six hospitals affiliated with a large, Midwestern academic medical center from July 2017 to July 2018 were provided with access to a tablet equipped with an inpatient portal and recruited to participate in the study (n We found both age and race disparities in use of the inpatient portal. Patients aged 60-69 (45.3% difference, p p p These findings suggest that the availability of the technology alone may be insufficient to overcome barriers to use and that additional intervention may be needed to close the digital divide. We identified lower use of the inpatient portal among African American and older patients, relative to White and younger patients, respectively.
年龄和种族差异在新技术的使用上——数字鸿沟——可能限制了面向患者的健康信息技术改善健康和医疗保健的潜力。本研究旨在调查专门为住院环境设计的患者门户的使用是否存在差异。2017 年 7 月至 2018 年 7 月期间，入住与一家中西部大型学术医疗中心有附属关系的六家医院的患者被提供了访问配备有住院患者门户的平板电脑的机会，并被招募参与研究（n=1312）。我们发现，使用住院患者门户存在年龄和种族差异。60-69 岁的患者（45.3%的差异，p<0.001）和 70 岁及以上的患者（52.5%的差异，p<0.001）的使用比例明显低于其他年龄组。此外，非裔美国人和白人患者之间（22.3%的差异，p<0.001）以及黑人和白人患者之间（25.4%的差异，p<0.001）使用该门户的比例也存在差异。这些发现表明，仅提供技术可能不足以克服使用障碍，可能需要额外的干预措施来缩小数字鸿沟。我们发现，与年轻的白人患者相比，年龄较大的非裔美国患者和年轻的黑人患者使用住院患者门户的比例较低。
