Impact of healthcare education on preferences for electronic health records: Results from national survey of patient users in Sweden

Electronic health records (EHR) are continuously evolving to better meet user needs, but the process is complicated by healthcare professionals and patients often disagreeing on priority areas of development. While this may be due to differences between professional and personal experiences, little is known whether specialist healthcare knowledge also affects user needs when using EHRs as patients. To investigate this, we analysed the responses of patient users in Sweden from the NORDeHEALTH 2022 Patient Survey. In the survey, respondents indicated whether they had healthcare education, and rated how useful various EHR information types and functions are. Average ratings were comparable between the two user groups, but significant differences were observed for information types and functions. Those without healthcare education rated the ability to point out errors as most useful, while those with healthcare education — the ability to contribute health information. The findings suggest healthcare education can influence users’ EHR preferences.