A scoping review of usability metrics for assessing eHealth systems

Abstract

eHealth systems have exploded in popularity worldwide in recent years, fundamentally altering how health services are delivered. However, there has been a long discussion about what usability metrics should be used to evaluate eHealth systems. This paper assesses the usability metrics mostly applied in evaluating eHealth systems. A scoping review method was used, whereas 15 papers were reviewed after being extracted from 2112 studies from PubMed, Emerald Insight, and SAGE. The search terms were "usability" in combination with "metrics", "evaluation metrics", "factors", "attributes", "framework", "models", "taxonomy", "eHealth", "health", "telehealth", and "mHealth". The study established that usability metrics, including ease of use, task-technology match, navigation, information quality, technical quality, guide and support, consistency, visibility, flexibility, accessibility, and collaboration, are mostly applied in evaluating eHealth systems’ usability. Although the metric named collaboration had a low frequency, this study recommends that it be used in assessing eHealth systems due to its necessity. Thus, the healthcare process involves multiple healthcare professionals collaborating to accomplish the patients’ healthcare process. Additionally, the study revealed limited studies on the usability of eHealth systems in developing countries, specifically Africa. Subsequently, a few African studies applied generic usability metrics only to evaluating eHealth systems compared to developed countries. Future studies should consider validating these metrics' applicability in contexts in developing countries with limited resources.