scholarly journals Website Usability Analysis of United States Academic Medical Centers (Preprint)

Author(s):  
Jonathan Gale ◽  
Kameron Black ◽  
Joshua David Calvano ◽  
Edwin Lauritz Fundingsland Jr ◽  
Deborah Lai ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gale ◽  
Kameron Black ◽  
Joshua David Calvano ◽  
Edwin Lauritz Fundingsland Jr ◽  
Deborah Lai ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Many healthcare organizations are now tasked with providing web-based health resources and information. Usability refers to the ease of user experience on a website. Our objective was to adapt pre-existing usability scoring systems for United States academic medical center websites, then apply this system to a sample for the purposes of testing this system and deriving insights from the results on potential areas of improvement. OBJECTIVE The primary aims of the study were to: 1) Adapt a pre-existing usability scoring methodology to academic medical centers; 2) apply and test this adapted usability scoring methodology on a sample set of academic medical center website and; 3) derive recommendations from these results on potential areas of improvements for our sample of academic medical centers websites. METHODS All website usability testing took place from 1 June 2020 to 15 December 2020. We replicated a methodology developed in previous literature and applied it to academic medical centers. Our sample included 73 U.S. academic medical centers. Usability was split into four broad categories: Accessibility (ability of those with low levels of computer literacy to access and navigate hospital’s Web presence), Marketing (ability to be found through search engines, examining the relevance of descriptions to the links provided), Content Quality (grammar, frequency of info 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 used for the final Overall Usability ranking. RESULTS The category with the highest average score was Technology, with a 0.82 (standard deviation of 0.068, standard error of 0.008). The lowest-performing category was Content Quality, with an average of 0.22 (standard deviation of 0.069, standard error of 0.008). CONCLUSIONS Our data suggests that Technology, on average, was the highest scored variable amongst 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 relevancy. 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.


Stroke ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay A Bliss ◽  
Carol A Vitellas ◽  
Nayanika Challa ◽  
Vivien H Lee

Introduction: The lower proportion of women at the rank of full professor compared to men has been documented in nearly all specialties. Women are under-represented in academic stroke neurology, but there is limited data. Methods: We reviewed all 160 U.S. medical schools and the associated medical centers for vascular neurologists. An internet search of stroke team websites and neurology department websites was performed from August 1, 2020 to August 25, 2020. We included 117 academic medical centers that had at least 1 vascular neurologist on faculty. We included vascular neurology ABPN certified or board eligible (fellowship-trained) neurologists. Data was collected on sex, academic rank, and American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) certification status. ABPN board certification status was verified on the ABPN verify CERT website. Social medical women’s neurology groups were also queried for names of women full professor to cross check. Results: Among 540 academic ABPN vascular neurologists, 182 (33.8%) were women and 358 (66.3%) were men. Among academic ranks, women made up 108/269 (40.1%) of Assistant professors, 49/137 (35.8%) of Associate professors, and 25/134 (18.8%) of full professors. Twenty two academic centers had vascular neurology female professors on faculty, compared to 70 academic centers with male full professors on faculty. Twenty nine academic centers had multiple male professors on faculty compared to only 3 centers with multiple female full professors. Among women, 108 (59.3%) were assistant professor, 49 (26.7%) were associate professor, 25 (13.7%) were full professor. Among men, 161 (45.0%) were assistant professor, 88 (24.6%) were associate professor, and 109 (30.5%) were professor. There was a significant difference between academic rank based upon sex (p <0.0001). Conclusion: Among academic medical centers in the United States, significant sex differences were observed in academic faculty rank for ABPN vascular neurologists, with women less likely than men to be full professors. Further study is warranted to address the gender gap in the field of stroke.


2017 ◽  
Vol 124 (4) ◽  
pp. 1208-1210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Aaronson ◽  
Sharon Abramovitz ◽  
Richard Smiley ◽  
Virginia Tangel ◽  
Ruth Landau

1988 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1369-1371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Anderson ◽  
Rolla B. Hill

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document