The Effectiveness of Australian Medical Portals: Are They Meeting the Health Consumers' Needs?

The move to using portals to distribute medical information is supported by Australian Governments and government agencies. The recent success of ‘telemedicine’ is promising for patients and governments alike as it could provide quality care and convenience for patients and reduces the burden on the health budget for governments. The Australian Government is taking a proactive role in developing medical portals to encourage the general use of the web for the dissemination of medical information (NHIMAC, 2000). Government portals such as HealthInsite (Australian) and BetterHealth (Australian Victorian Government) encourage users to access the sites (NHIMAC, 2000). . Despite the support by governments, usability tests examining portal effectiveness indicate that many portals are not effective for users. This paper presents the results of usability testing conducted on current Australian medical portals and discusses the portals’ effectiveness from the users’ perspective. The paper also discusses current technology that could improve medical portals’ effectiveness thereby better serving the needs of the health consumer.