Use of a community-based touch-screen public-access health information system.

Meeting the demands of patients and the public for health information is now a recognised aim. Healthpoint is a community-based touch-screen public-access health information system which aims to make health information easily accessible by the public and to provide feedback information on this demand. We have assessed Healthpoint in an experiment in three parts. Part one was a survey of 13 Healthpoints for several weeks in various community sites in Glasgow, such as a shopping centre, supermarket, library, and pub, as well as health service sites such as out-patient department and general practice. The number of users and the topics chosen were recorded by the systems. Part two was a survey of ten Healthpoints in one town (Clydebank) over five months, which examined routine information recorded by the system, and interviews with an opportunistic sample of 300 weekday shoppers in the street and a random sample of 271 by telephone. Part three was a survey of one Healthpoint in a general practice for 36 weeks using routine recording by the system and a postal survey of a systematic sample of 250 attenders. Seventy five (25%) out of 300 in the street survey and 45 (22%) of the telephone sample who had visited a site where there was a Healthpoint had used it. Overall, 17% of the telephone sample had used it. Seventy three (27%) out of 200 general practice attenders had used Healthpoint.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)