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. 2021 Dec 21;23(12):e27750.
doi: 10.2196/27750.

An Analysis of US Academic Medical Center Websites: Usability Study

Jonathan James Gale  1 , Kameron Collin Black  1 , Joshua David Calvano  1 , Edwin Lauritz Fundingsland Jr  1 , Deborah Lai  2 , Sara Silacci  3 , Shuhan He  3
Affiliations

An Analysis of US Academic Medical Center Websites: Usability Study

Jonathan James Gale et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Health care organizations are tasked with providing web-based health resources and information. Usability refers to the ease of user experience on a website. In this study, we conducted a usability analysis of academic medical centers in the United States, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been previously carried out.

Objective: The primary aims of the study were to the following: (1) adapt a preexisting usability scoring methodology to academic medical centers; (2) apply and test this methodology on a sample set of academic medical center websites; and (3) make recommendations from these results on potential areas of improvements for our sample of academic medical center websites.

Methods: All website usability testing took place from June 1, 2020, to December 15, 2020. We replicated a methodology developed in previous literature and applied it to academic medical centers. Our sample included 73 US academic medical centers. Usability was split into four broad categories: accessibility (the ability of those with low levels of computer literacy to access and navigate the hospital's website); marketing (the ability of websites to be found through search engines and the relevance of descriptions to the links provided); content quality (grammar, frequency of information updates, material relevancy, and readability); and technology (download speed, quality of the programming code, and website infrastructure). Using these tools, we scored each website in each category. The composite of key factors in each category contributed to an overall "general usability" score for each website. An overall score was then calculated by applying a weighted percentage across all factors and was used for the final "overall usability" ranking.

Results: The category with the highest average score was technology, with a 0.82 (SD 0.068, SE 0.008). The lowest-performing category was content quality, with an average of 0.22 (SD 0.069, SE 0.008). As these numbers reflect weighted percentages as an integer, the higher the score, the greater the overall usability in that category.

Conclusions: Our data suggest that technology, on average, was the highest-scored variable among academic medical center websites. Because website functionality is essential to a user's experience, it is justified that academic medical centers invest in optimal website performance. The overall lowest-scored variable was content quality. A potential reason for this may be that academic medical center websites are usually larger in size, making it difficult to monitor the increased quantity of content. An easy way to improve this variable is to conduct more frequent website audits to assess readability, grammar, and relevance. Marketing is another area in which these organizations have potential for improvement. Our recommendation is that organizations utilize search engine optimization techniques to improve their online visibility and discoverability.

Keywords: academic medical center; digital health; health care website; usability testing; web crawler; website usability.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: SH is on the advisory board for Covid Act Now and Safeter.App, and is the co-founder and member of the executive board of ConductScience Inc. SH is on the committee for the American College of Emergency Physician Supply Chain Task Force, and received research funding from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE). SH also discloses the following personal fees: Withings Inc, Boston Globe, American College of Emergency Physicians, Maze Eng Inc, ConductScience Inc, Curative Medical Associates, and VIOMed Spa New England. No other disclosures are reported by the authors.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sample selection criteria for academic medical center websites.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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