Ryoma Seto*, Tokyo Healthcare University, Tokyo, Japan Track: Research Presentation Topic: Health information on the web: Supply and Demand Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2012-09-12

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Background:
Hospital Information Services in Tokyo, which are known as “Himawari”, provide a search engine for patients who are looking for hospitals to undergo treatment. However, usage rates were 27.7% in 2008 and 30.2% in 2011. Previous studies identified a gap between what Himawari offers and what people want in terms of information regarding hospitals. Himawari mainly provides basic information about hospital services, while users were looking for information about the reputation of the hospitals.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to evaluate and outline a plan for revising the Hospital Information Service Search Engine (HISSE) user interface in response to the needs of citizens, enabling its use on smartphones.
Methods:
Using a web-based questionnaire, 9,000 web monitors living with their families in Tokyo (age: 30–49 years) were requested to complete a survey about their hospital information needs. In total, 300 web monitors responded to the questionnaire and completed the evaluation of the HISSE prototype for the smartphone. The web-based questionnaire was built and powered by Goo Research of NTT Resonant, Inc.
Results:
Respondents used the following resources to search for hospital information: hospital websites (84.7%), word-of-mouth (57.7%), signboards (12.0), and print methods or television (3% or less). They searched for the following information when looking for hospitals: opening hours (81.3%), reputation (67.3%), and specialty areas (60.3%). Hospital reputation was the information most often sought (29.3%). Respondents mainly viewed objective information (e.g., clinical performance) as more important than subjective information. However, regarding hospital reputation, 55.7% of respondents preferred subjective information (e.g., word-of-mouth) to objective information (e.g., frequency of compliments). As for HISSE, patients preferred “comments from patient to patient” (78.8%) to “comments from medical staff to patient” (70.3%).
Respondents also viewed the smartphone prototype showing the results list of a search of HISSE. The results list includes the hospital name, department, opening hours, distance to the hospital, and star rating of each hospital. Respondents were asked what information should be listed in the star rating, and the following responses were obtained: reputation of the hospitals (53.3%), services available (14.7%), and clinical performance (13.7%). However, 16.0% of respondents felt that a star rating was not necessary.
Discussion:
The results of this study indicated that the citizens of Tokyo who responded to the survey preferred subjective information to objective information. The government’s HISSE currently provides objective information about hospitals. In their regular purchase behaviors, people frequently use a company’s reputation and information from its website in their decision-making. Therefore, hospitals should also provide information about reputation on their websites in order to meet users’ needs.
In their evaluation of the HISSE prototype for the smartphone, most respondents were in favor of using the star rating to providing feedback about hospital reputations. As a next step, a method for recording information as to the quality of a hospital’s reputation should be developed.
Conclusion:
This study demonstrated that in the revised HISSE, focusing on information regarding reputation will be useful in adapting to the information needs of the citizens of Tokyo.