Understanding the support needs of patients accessing test results online. PHRs offer great promise, but support issues must be addressed to ensure appropriate access.

Personal health records (PHR) offer great promise in transforming the patient experience, but a number of support issues must be addressed to ensure that patients have appropriate access to their health information. Two hundred and fifty breast cancer patients registered to use a portal providing access to personal health information over a six-week period. All support calls were directed to a research triage centre and redirected either to technical, clinical or psychosocial support. Log files were coded and analyzed. Two hundred and thirty-nine support contacts were logged by 122 participants. The majority was referred to technical support; the remaining contacts were directed to clinical support. Seven categories of technical support were identified: registration problems, site access, login issues, password reset, activation key issues, result access and other difficulties. In accessing their test results, patients required support in a number of technical domains, but educational and psychosocial support were not heavily utilized.