Page 63 - THE DUTCH TALKING TOUCH SCREEN QUESTIONNAIRE

Development of the Dutch Talking Touch Screen Questionnaire
The ICT product/service aspects that may alleviate the aforementioned problems are the human-machine interface, the physical appearance of the product/service and the environment in which it is being used: • The human-machine interface involves the interaction of the user (operation) and the product/service. An example guideline is:
“The human machine interface should be inviting and intuitive.”
• The physical appearance involves the look-and-feel of the product/ service (mainly hardware). An example guideline is:
“The physical appearance should be friendly and trustworthy.”
• The environment involves the social and physical context in which the product/service is located. An example guideline is:
“The environment should provide sufficient privacy.”
3 Health literacy and assessment
3.1 Health literacy
One of the areas in which self-reliance is particularly relevant is health care. Since alliance between health care professionals and their patients correlates with better treatment outcomes [16], patients are expected to take a more active, mutual, partnered part in the patient- provider relationship. To do this effectively, patients need to be health literate, meaning they need to be able to seek, understand and use health information [12]. However, large groups in society, in particular people with low literacy, lack the necessary skills to do so [12, 17-19].
People with limited health literacy have little knowledge about their own health conditions [19], which has broad ramifications on how they interact with their health care providers. Patients with poor health literacy skills have trouble determining what information their providers need and what information is irrelevant. They often lack the health care vocabulary to report symptoms accurately and may convey information illogically or in a jumbled order [17]. Low literate patients often feel overwhelmed by information about their illness and tend to ask fewer questions [17]. The tendency to be more passive complicates patient-provider interaction further and leads to miscommunication [20]. This may cause poorer understanding of illness and treatment, poorer health status, less understanding and use of preventive services, and increased hospitalizations [21].
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